Nature's Way Light Mature Recipe review

This finishes in our Good band, which may surprise anyone who reads the fat figure first and assumes a lighter food must be a thinner one. The chicken is named and split into its parts, the joint support carries a real printed dose, and the mineral and vitamin panel is complete.

The trade offs are exactly the ones a light recipe makes on purpose. Carbohydrate runs to 52.7% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical of adult dry food, and protein sits at 22.8% of dry matter. That is how energy is brought down to an estimated 328 kcal per 100 grams. That is the whole point of the food when a dog's appetite has outlasted their exercise.

Ingredients, as declared: 38% Chicken consisting: Chicken (12%), Dried Chicken (20%), Chicken Fat (3.5%), Chicken Liver (2.5%), Brown Rice (20%), Potato, Harvest Oats, Beet Pulp, Brewer's Yeast, Salmon Oil, Minerals, Dried Seaweed, Glucosamine, MSM, Chondroitin (1923mg/kg), Prebiotic MOS, Prebiotic FOS, Dried Dandelion, Dried Marigold, Dried Peppermint, Yucca Schidigera Extract

The 38% chicken block is 20% dried chicken, 12% fresh chicken, 3.5% chicken fat and 2.5% chicken liver. For a food this lean, putting the dried entry ahead of the fresh one is the sensible way round. Most of a fresh meat is water, and the dried share is what survives the oven as protein. Even so, this is a modest meat declaration by design, and the finished protein of 21% as fed reflects it.

The plant side opens with brown rice at 20%, then potato, harvest oats and beet pulp. Brown rice keeps its bran, oats are gentle and fibrous, and beet pulp adds the bulk that makes a smaller meal feel like a meal. Fibre finishes at 4.5% as fed, 4.9% of dry matter, which is above what most adult kibbles carry and is precisely the mechanism a light food relies on.

Chondroitin is declared at 1923 mg/kg, which is a proper dose written out rather than a suggestion, and it is the standout entry in the small print. Glucosamine and MSM sit next to it without their own figures. Both joint compounds come from animals, glucosamine typically from shellfish and chondroitin from cattle cartilage. Bear them in mind on an exclusion diet.

For natural B vitamins, brewer's yeast is among the better sources, and it makes a plain kibble taste of something. That matters more as a dog's nose fades. Dried seaweed supplies iodine for the thyroid. The tail of dandelion, marigold and peppermint is the label's flourish, and no more than that. Yucca schidigera is there with an eye on what the garden has to put up with.

Omega 3 here comes from salmon oil, and a dog uses the marine form most readily on skin, coat and joints. The declared totals are 2.5% omega 6 and 0.4% omega 3. Vitamin E is unusually generous at 475 mg per kilo, an antioxidant that suits an older dog and also protects the fats in the bag.

Calcium works out at 2.12% of dry matter with ash at 8.0%, both comfortable adult levels. Iron and zinc are dosed at 48 mg per kilo, iodine at 0.96 mg, selenium at 0.29 mg and copper at 14 mg, a light hand on the copper that will suit an older liver.

£4.42 a kilo, sold in a 12kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat roughly 256 grams a day, about £1.13 a day, working from around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The bag's own table asks 150 to 250 grams for a dog between 15kg and 25kg, and a dog on a slimming plan belongs at the lower end of that.