Orlando Pate Foil Trays review

Two very different readings meet in this tray. The analysis is the strong half: protein converts to 55.6% of dry matter, a genuinely meat like figure, and estimated carbohydrate sits at 3.8% where 15.8% is typical of adult wet food. The label is the other half, and it is the half that decides the outcome. The tray finishes in our Average band, while the middle of the adult wet shelf sits ahead of it in our Excellent band. Nutritional balance reads Outstanding, with protein and processing and transparency both Good, held there by meat and animal derivatives and various sugars, which between them describe most of the tray without naming any of it. That is a labelling verdict, not a safety one.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (Including 4% Beef), Minerals, Various Sugars.

Three entries make up this label and only one of them names anything. Meat and animal derivatives covers the fleshy parts of any warm blooded land animal, in any proportion. What goes in can change from batch to batch, and the print stays as it is. Beef is pinned inside it at 4%. Minerals follow, undivided. The list closes on various sugars.

Sugars go into a dog food for palatability, and the term covers everything from beet syrup to plain sucrose. No percentage sits beside it, and last place on a three-entry list makes it the smallest of them. The source stays off the label.

What the analysis shows is a different story from what the list shows. Protein at 10.0% converts to 55.6% of dry matter and fat at 4.5% to 25.0%, with carbohydrate estimated at 3.8% of dry matter against the 15.8% typical for adult wet food. On the figures this is a lean, meat weighted tray. The list simply will not tell you which animals it is lean and meat weighted on.

Every entry in the short added panel carries its own dose per kilo: vitamin D3, vitamin E, zinc, manganese, copper and iodine. Ash converts to 13.9% of dry matter, unremarkable for a wet food, so the mineral load is not being carried by filler.

Sold in 300g trays.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat roughly 1110 grams a day. That assumes about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate) and our estimated energy figure of 76 kcal per 100g. That comes to close to four trays a day, so a larger dog will move through a case quickly.