Naturediet Feel Good Senior Lite review

This carton finishes in our Excellent band, a shade behind the Naturediet cartons written for adults in general. Nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding, with protein and processing and value each Excellent. Most wet food gathers in this band, and the category scores strongly with us, so a placing here says the recipe is doing the ordinary things properly. A lighter food will always look leaner on paper, and that is the job it was given.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey - 28%, Chicken - 28%, Rice - 10%, Carrots - 9%, Potato - 6%, Dried Seaweed

Turkey at 28% and chicken at 28% open the list, and between them the named poultry accounts for well over half the carton. Turkey is the lighter of the two birds and lower in fat, which is why it heads a recipe like this one rather than following it. As fed, protein is 8.0% and fat 6.0%, and energy lands at 95 kcal per 100g, which is where the lightness actually shows.

The only cereal is rice at 10%, and carrots at 9% and potato at 6% come behind it. Carbohydrate is an estimate on our side, because the label leaves it out, and it converts to 9.1% of dry matter. That is comfortably below the 15.8% typical of adult wet food. Most people do not expect that from a lite recipe. Crude fibre converts to 13.6% of dry matter, high for a wet food and doing useful work in a carton meant to keep a dog feeling fed on fewer calories.

The lightness, then, comes from taking fat out rather than from packing filler in. Protein converts to 36.4% of dry matter and fat to 27.3%, so the meat is still carrying the recipe. Dried seaweed closes the list, as it does across the Naturediet range, bringing trace minerals and iodine at a small level.

One thing the label does not do is declare its moisture, so the dry matter conversions here rest on an assumed 78%, standard for this style of carton. That changes the arithmetic slightly, not the recipe.

The added panel is fuller than the brand's grain-free cartons, running to vitamins A and D3, selenium, iron, copper, manganese and zinc, each with a printed figure per kilo. Selenium arrives as sodium selenite. Of the two forms the rules permit, it is the commoner, and the one most of the industry uses.

£4.02 a kilo, in 390g cartons sold in boxes of 18.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat around 884 grams a day, which comes to about £3.55, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). For a dog of that weight Naturediet asks between 520 and 910 grams a day. An older dog taking less exercise will usually sit near the bottom of that.