Natures Menu Raw Freeze-Dried: Beef review

Each of the four reaches our Outstanding band and they finish level with one another. The typical freeze dried food sits in that same band, so this range is keeping the best company its format has to offer rather than standing apart from it. All four flavours read Outstanding for protein and processing and for nutritional balance. Transparency and value do the same, and the four are as evenly matched as our scoring produces. Choose by the animal, since the ranking will not decide it.

Ingredients, as declared: Beef 80%, Carrots 5%, Apples 5%, Butternut Squash 1%, Sweet Potato 1%, Pea Fibre, Minerals, Cranberries, Blackberries, Flaxseed, Chicory Root, Kale, Peppermint, Coconut Oil, Green Tea, Yucca, Rosemary, Parsley, Dandelion Root, Hawthorn Leaf

Freeze drying is the whole idea. Low temperature draws the water off without baking it away, so what stays in the pack is the raw ingredient in concentrated form. On a dry matter basis the four run from 39.4% to 42.6% protein and from 34.0% to 36.2% fat, with the carbohydrate estimate never rising above 9.6%. That is roughly what a bowl of raw meat and a handful of vegetables ought to look like once the water has gone.

The garden fraction is identical across the four and pinned where it counts: carrots and apples at 5% each, then butternut squash and sweet potato at 1%. Behind them come pea fibre, cranberries, blackberries, flaxseed, chicory root and kale. Peppermint, coconut oil, green tea, yucca and a handful of herbs follow, all at the small quantities that season a recipe.

Two of those small entries are worth pulling out. Chicory root carries inulin, a prebiotic that feeds the gut bacteria lower down. Cranberries bring vitamin C and a good load of natural antioxidants with them. Neither shifts the analysis, but both look chosen with care.

No second animal creeps in either. These labels carry no egg and no fish oil. Unnamed fats are absent too, so an elimination trial can be run on them honestly. A dog with a chicken history has three other flavours waiting on the shelf.

The added panel is dosed per kilo and reads better than most: vitamin E at 44mg, zinc at 57.3mg, iron at 18.9mg, copper at 5.65mg and iodine at 0.85mg. Selenium comes through an inactivated selenised yeast at 0.06mg. That yeast form is the less common of the two selenium sources permitted in pet food and generally the better absorbed of them. It is a quiet sign of care in a part of the label most shoppers never reach.

Beef at 80%, sharing the highest fat in the range with the lamb at 36.2% of dry matter and matching it on energy at 450 kcal per 100g. Beef is highly digestible and hard for most dogs to ignore, and this is the flavour many households start with.

£39.98 a kilo across all four flavours, sold in 120g, 250g and 625g packs.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works through roughly 187 to 191 grams a day depending on the flavour. Behind those portions is a maintenance allowance of about 840 kcal a day, the standard 110 × bodyweight^0.75. That comes to between £7.46 and £7.63 a day.