Natures Menu Hearty Stew Pouches: With Salmon & Herbs review

All four pouches come to rest in our Average band. Typical adult wet food scores up in Excellent. The gap is mostly what the pack prints: an animal share given by category, a starch source never named, and no calorie figure of the maker's own. Protein and processing reads Poor across most of the range, though transparency comes back Good on all four. Nutritional balance, though, comes back Outstanding on all four, and that is worth pausing on, because it says the analysis underneath is respectable even where the wording is not. Protein converts to 44.4% of dry matter, which is a solid reading for a wet food by any measure. The salmon pouch is the exception the other way, reading Good for protein and processing where the rest read Poor.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and animal derivatives 31%, fish and fish derivatives (salmon 4%), derivatives of vegetable origin (chicory inulin 0.1%), minerals, herbs (0.015%, one quarter each of parsley, coriander, thyme, and dill), various sugars.

Meat and animal derivatives at 35% is the first entry on three of the four labels, with the named animal declared at 4% inside it. Legally that term is a catch-all for the fleshy parts and by-products of warm-blooded land animals. It can cover excellent material and thoroughly ordinary material alike, and the label gives you no way to tell which you have. The salmon pouch works differently again, dropping the land-animal figure to 31% and adding fish and fish derivatives with salmon at 4%, so that recipe carries both.

Each vegetable is declared dried with its fresh equivalent alongside. That is honest labelling. The beef pouch has 0.8% dried carrots standing in for 4% fresh, and the turkey 1.1% dried green beans for 4% fresh. On the plate that is a garnish rather than a course, and the salmon pouch carries no vegetables at all.

Chicory inulin at 0.1% is the one added ingredient with a job to do. The useful bacteria in the gut feed on inulin, a soluble fibre. That is why it turns up in a lot of wet food, though at this level it is a light touch.

Various sugars close every list. Dogs like the taste, and that is why sugar is added to wet food at all. The amount here is unstated, so weigh this entry up if added sugar is kept out of the bowl in your house. It is not the sort of thing that needs alarm, but it is the sort of thing worth knowing you are buying.

The estimated carbohydrate deserves a word of explanation. At 24.0% of dry matter it runs well above the 15.8% typical of adult wet food, and yet there is no obvious starch on the list to account for it. That is what happens when a figure is worked from the analysis rather than read off a recipe. On a label this brief the estimate is the best reading available, not a measured value.

The added panel is short and dosed: vitamin D3 at 200 IU, vitamin E at 100 IU, plus manganese at 3 mg and zinc at 20 mg per kilo. Vitamin A does not appear on any of the four, and the salmon pouch also leaves out vitamin D3.

The odd one out of the four. Land-animal content drops to 31% and fish and fish derivatives join the list with salmon at 4%, so this pouch carries fish and land meat together. It adds a herb blend at 0.015%, split evenly between parsley, coriander, thyme and dill. No other recipe here goes without vegetables and without vitamin D3 in its panel.

£11.20 a kilo, in 100g pouches.

As a guide, take maintenance for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition as about 840 kcal a day, on the usual 110 × bodyweight^0.75 estimate. That comes to around £12.92 a day, or roughly 1154 grams. That is a lot of small pouches for a dog of that size, and the pouch is really scaled for a smaller dog or for topping a bowl. The label's guide for a dog of 10 to 25kg is 700 grams a day.