Natural Instinct Special Diet review

This recipe lands in our Outstanding band. The raw category's midpoint sits in that same band, which tells you both how strong raw feeding has become and how well a bowl built deliberately lean holds its place in it. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Outstanding, while transparency reads Good, since the label names its parts clearly but publishes no vitamin and mineral declaration behind them.

Ingredients, as declared: beef liver 5%, beef white tripe 50%, chicken 20%, apple, brewers yeast, butternut squash, carrot, kelp, salmon oil, spinach

White tripe is the choice that shapes everything else. A ruminant's stomach is what tripe is. Green tripe is left unwashed, while white tripe has been cleaned and processed, which takes away the enzymes and friendly bacteria raw feeders usually reach for tripe to get. What it leaves behind is a very lean, very digestible protein, and that is clearly the point of this recipe, not an oversight.

The analysis is the standout here. Protein converting to 62.4% of dry matter against fat at 19.4% is a ratio you rarely see in raw food, where fat normally runs close to protein or above it. At 98 kcal per 100g the food is light enough that a dog can be given a satisfying portion while the calorie total stays modest. That is a genuinely useful trick for a dog easily disappointed by a small bowl.

Beef liver at 5% and chicken at 20% do the work the lean tripe cannot. For vitamin A, B12 and copper, liver is about as dense a source as a dog will eat. In a recipe with no vitamin premix behind it, liver does a lot of the micronutrient lifting. Brewers yeast adds B vitamins from a whole food, and kelp brings iodine and trace minerals.

Calcium converts to 1.69% of dry matter with ash at 7.6%, both lower than a bone in mince would read. Stomach and muscle meat lead this recipe, with little frame in the grind. Carbohydrate is estimated by difference at 8.9% of dry matter, the highest figure on the page. With no starch source on the list, read it as the apple, butternut squash and carrot plus whatever the estimate sweeps up.

£5.99 a kilo, sold as a 1kg pack or as two 500g packs.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), that comes to roughly 855 grams a day, or £5.12. The portion is what drives that figure: at 98 kcal per 100g, more food goes into the bowl than a denser mince would need.