Nutriment Kidney Support review

This recipe finishes in our Outstanding band, and it gets there on plain merits. Named animal ingredients sit across the top of the list, the organ share is real, there is no filler, and the carbohydrate estimate sits right where raw normally does. Adult raw is the most competitive company on our scoring, and the middle of that category already reaches the same band, so matching it while working to a much narrower brief is a strong showing. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Outstanding. Transparency and value do too.

Ingredients, as declared: 50% Beef Tripe, 30% Whole Sardines, 5% Beef Liver, Butternut Squash, Kale, Sunflower Seeds, Spirulina, Dandelion Leaf Powder, Cinnamon, Bilberry

Beef tripe at 50% is the foundation. Tripe is ruminant stomach, high in protein and fat. Dogs digest it unusually easily. Green tripe is left uncleaned and unbleached. That is why it keeps the digestive enzymes and friendly bacteria raw feeders prize it for. Half a pack of it also explains why this recipe tends to be eaten rather than sniffed at.

Whole sardines at 30% are the second pillar and the more interesting one. A whole small oily fish brings its flesh, its oil and its soft skeleton in one ingredient. That is a neat way to get long-chain omega 3 fats and some skeletal minerals into a bowl without reaching for a supplement. It also means this is a fish recipe in every practical sense, however the allergen listing reads.

Beef liver at 5% is the only organ meat here, and it is well chosen. Liver is the densest source of vitamin A, B12, copper and selenium a dog is likely to meet, and a small percentage of it goes a long way. Nutriment publishes no separate vitamin and mineral panel, so the liver, the fish and the plants are the whole of the micronutrition story.

The plant tail is where the recipe's brief shows. Butternut squash and kale do the vegetable work, sunflower seeds add fat and fibre, and spirulina, dandelion leaf, cinnamon and bilberry are the traditional herbal choices a maker reaches for when building something like this. None of them carries a printed inclusion figure. Take them as considered seasoning over a recipe already standing on its tripe and its fish.

The analysis is lean and wet. Protein converts to 50.0% of dry matter, fat to a comparatively restrained 30.7%, with crude fibre and crude ash both at 6.9% and carbohydrate estimated at 5.5%. Energy works out at 132 kcal per 100g on our estimate from the declared analysis, below the 155 kcal typical for raw, so portions sit at the larger end of the scale.

£9.38 a kilo, sold in a 500g pack.

For a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), a day comes to roughly 636g, or £5.97.