Omni Chickpea & Potato Paté review

Our scoring rewards named animal ingredients and the share of the recipe they fill, and this can contains none by design. That is most of the reason it settles in our Average band while the typical adult wet food finishes in our Excellent band. Read that as a description of what the recipe is rather than a fault in how it is put together. Outstanding is the transparency reading. Nutritional balance is Average and protein and processing Poor. For a plant based can that declares its percentages this openly, that is a fair reflection of what it sets out to do.

Ingredients, as declared: Potatoes (15%), Dried Chickpeas (7% equivalent to 14% Chickpeas), Pea Protein (4%), Rapeseed Oil (2.5%), Green Beans (2%), Lupin Beans Powder (2%), Potato Protein, Minerals, Tomato Powder (1.25%), Chia Seeds (1%), Dried Brewer's Yeast (1%), Coconut Oil (0.5%), Dried Seaweed (Ascophyllum Nodosum) (0.1%), Turmeric Powder (0.07%)

Potatoes at 15% open the list, with chickpeas next, given honestly as 7% dried and equivalent to 14% before the water came out. Potato is mostly starch, worth remembering for a dog whose blood sugar needs watching. Chickpeas bring fibre and a fair share of plant protein of their own.

The protein figure comes from several places at once. Pea protein at 4%, lupin beans powder at 2% and potato protein together lift the analysis to 28.8% of dry matter. Brewer's yeast at 1% adds B vitamins and a complete amino acid profile alongside them. For a dog, refined plant proteins do not match meat. That is the honest limit of the approach, not a flaw in this particular can.

Fats come from rapeseed oil at 2.5% and coconut oil at 0.5%, with chia seeds at 1% supplying plant omega 3. Rapeseed oil is a sound choice among vegetable oils, though the omega 3 in a seed is not the same molecule a dog would take in from fish.

The supplement panel is where a meat free recipe has to work hardest, and this one is dosed in print. Vitamin A, vitamin D3, taurine, L-carnitine and added amino acids come first, then zinc, iron, copper, manganese, iodine and selenium. Taurine and carnitine are the two a dog would normally get from meat, so seeing them declared is reassuring rather than worrying.

Tomato powder at 1.25%, green beans at 2%, seaweed at 0.1% and turmeric at 0.07% finish the list. The seaweed carries iodine and trace minerals, and the turmeric is present in an amount too small to taste.

£1.60 a kilo, in a 395 g can sold as a 6 pack or a 12 pack.

As a guide, feeding works out at about £1.40 a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to roughly 875 grams a day, or a little over two cans.