Naturediet Purely: British Farmed Chicken review

The three cartons finish level with one another, near the top of our Excellent band, and that is the strongest showing anywhere in the Naturediet line. Those readings come from doing one thing thoroughly: naming a single animal, printing its share, and leaving the rest of the label empty. Because the typical adult wet food sits in our Excellent band too, the band alone understates the distance here. What actually separates them is how little of this carton goes unexplained.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken - 92%

The animal is declared at 92% and it is the only ingredient on the list. On the chicken and the lamb that is one species and one species only, which is rare enough on any shelf and rarer still at this sort of simplicity. The salmon carton splits its 92% between salmon at 64% and whitefish at 28%. Two species make that a fish recipe, not a single-species one.

There is no rice here, no potato, no pea and no oil to speak for, so the analysis comes almost entirely from the meat. Protein converts to 37.5% of dry matter and fat to 32.8%, and energy reaches 147 kcal per 100g where the typical adult wet food sits at 97. No carbohydrate is declared, so the 14.1% of dry matter here is our own working. On a carton with no starch ingredient at all, that figure is mostly the arithmetic catching what the analysis leaves over.

The last of the carton is what the label never accounts for. The named animal covers 92% and the added vitamins and minerals cover a fraction more, and the remainder is simply not itemised. On a recipe this plain that is a small thing, but it is the one question the list leaves you holding.

The added panel is short, and there is a printed figure per kilo against every entry: vitamins A and D3, then iron, copper, manganese and zinc. The fish carton differs slightly again. It drops manganese and prints less vitamin A than the meat cartons. A food this heavily meat-based carries a great deal of its micronutrition in the ingredient itself. That is how a panel this brief reads as a strength.

Chicken at 92%, described on the pack as British farmed, and one of the two cartons that keeps the whole recipe to a single species. The analysis is identical across the range, so the choice here is entirely about the animal.

All three recipes are £4.42 a kilo, in 390g cartons sold in boxes of 12 and 18.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 571 grams a day, which comes to around £2.53, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). This carton is denser than most wet food, so the daily portion comes out below what the wet shelf usually asks for. Naturediet's own chart puts a dog of that weight between 390 and 683 grams a day.