Natures Deli Adult Light review

Our scoring puts this one in the Good band, the same band that describes the middle of the adult dry shelf. Nothing about that is mysterious. Turkey is declared at 30% and most of it arrives as turkey meal, so the meat share is decent without being large. Brown rice at 29% plus white rice at 18.5% then fill most of what is left. Carbohydrate converts to 52.3% of dry matter where the typical adult dry food runs at 46.2%, and protein finishes at 24.7%. Fat is the one figure held deliberately low, at 9.3% of dry matter. A light diet exists to do exactly that. Read the band as a description of how the recipe is built, then judge the food on whether it moves the needle on the scales.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey (30%; including turkey meal (22.5%), turkey (5.6%), turkey gravy (1.9%)), brown rice (29%), white rice (18.5%), dried beet pulp, dried sweet potato (2.8%), turkey fat (1.9%), dried peas (1.9%), dried chick peas (1.9%), dried pumpkin (1.9%), minerals, brewers' yeast, vegetable stock, linseed oil, dried carrot (0.5%), yeast (as a source of mannan-oligosaccharides (prebiotic MOS; 0.14%)), chicory root extract (as a source of fructo-oligosaccharides (prebiotic FOS; 0.14%)), dried rosemary, yucca schidigera (0.023%), glucosamine (0.012%), dried cranberry, dried dandelion root, dried pomegranate, chondroitin sulphate (0.005%)

Turkey at 30% breaks into turkey meal at 22.5%, turkey at 5.6% and turkey gravy at 1.9%, and that split is the useful part. Turkey meal joins the mix dry, its water taken out before it gets there. That is why it carries far more protein into the kibble than the fresh share does. Turkey is also leaner than chicken by nature. Labels written for dogs on a reducing plan lean on it for that reason.

Rice does the rest of the carrying. Brown rice at 29% leads and white rice at 18.5% comes next, with dried beet pulp behind them as the fibre source. Rice is gentle on most digestions and cooks down predictably, though between them the two grains occupy more of this recipe than the bird does.

L-carnitine at 150 mg is the entry that earns the word light. It has a hand in shuttling fat into the part of the cell that burns it, and that is why it appears on foods written for dogs losing weight. Here it works alongside a fat level of 8.5% and fibre at 3.5%, so a smaller portion still feels like a meal.

The gut package is a pair of prebiotics: yeast brings the mannan-oligosaccharides, chicory root the fructo-oligosaccharides, each declared at 0.14%. Both go to work in the large intestine, on its bacteria and not on the dog. Dried sweet potato, peas, chick peas and pumpkin each come in at 1.9% or under. Cranberry, dandelion root and pomegranate sit last of all, there for seasoning.

Glucosamine at 0.012% and chondroitin sulphate at 0.005% close things out. Both carry a printed percentage, and plenty of labels do not go that far. The amounts are small, so treat them as a gentle daily top up rather than a course of treatment. Both are also made from animal material, glucosamine usually from shellfish and chondroitin from cartilage. That only becomes a live question on a strict single protein trial.

The mineral panel is mostly the familiar sulphate and oxide forms, with a second helping of zinc arriving as a chelate at 50 mg alongside 70 mg of zinc oxide. Chelated minerals are generally the easier form for a dog to take up, so seeing part of the zinc supplied that way is a small mark in the label's favour.

Sold in 2kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works through about 265 grams a day, taking 840 kcal a day as the target (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). For a dog between 10kg and 20kg, the label's own table asks 150 to 250 grams. The calorie figure behind our sum is an estimate too, so let your dog's waistline have the last word if the two disagree.