Paws on Plates Complete Fresh: Loki's Lovely Lamb review

All five recipes sit in our Outstanding band, and each arrives there with protein and processing, transparency and value reading Outstanding, and nutritional balance running from Good up to Outstanding. The spread between them is slight enough that your dog's protein history is a far better guide than any ranking. It helps to know what company they are keeping. Gently cooked food is the strongest category on the market, and the typical fresh recipe sits in our Outstanding band as well. These five are holding their own on a shelf where the standard already starts high.

Ingredients, as declared: Diced Lamb (26.7%), Lamb Heart (26.7%), Lamb Liver (6.67%), Sweet Potato (13.33%), Swede (6.6%), Spinach (6.6%) Green Peppers (6.6%), Carrots (6.6%), Broccoli (3.3%)

Fresh food declares its analysis with the water still in it, which is why the percentages on these packs look small next to a dried food. Moisture on the beef reads 65.4%, climbing to 75.2% on the turkey. Strip that water from the sum and protein sits between 29.8% and 52.0% of dry matter across the five. That is a properly meat led set of figures by any measure.

The construction repeats across the range: a named cut of muscle meat, an equal or near equal share of heart, then liver in a smaller slot. Heart is a hard working muscle, not an organ, and it carries the amino acids that come with that job. Liver is the densest source of nutrients in most bowls, and that is exactly why it appears at a few percent and not more. Plenty of fresh brands skip that level of detail. Here all three are named.

Vegetables do real work here rather than making up numbers. Butternut squash, sweet potato and swede carry the starch, peppers, spinach, broccoli and kale bring the greens, and carrot and apple round things off. The estimated carbohydrate reflects how much of that each recipe takes on, reaching 36.9% of dry matter on the lamb and its sweet potato while the turkey recipe reads close to nothing at all.

Every recipe closes with the same superfood mix: salmon oil at 1.1%, seaweed at 0.35%, turmeric and dried rosemary at 0.3% each, ginger at 0.2%, then green lipped mussel and chia seeds at 0.15%. Salmon oil is the fatty acid engine of the range. It is also why every recipe here contains fish, worth knowing before you pick the beef bowl for a fish avoiding dog. Green lipped mussel is the traditional joint inclusion and it arrives in company that suits it.

The added panel is dosed in print: vitamins A and E, then zinc, iron, manganese, copper and iodine, with calcium supplied as calcium carbonate on four of the five recipes. Sammy's list stops at iodine without that calcium entry, which is worth raising with Paws on Plates if it is the recipe you settle on.

Diced lamb and lamb heart at 26.7% each with lamb liver at 6.67%, then sweet potato at 13.33% as the starchy base and swede, spinach, green peppers, carrots and broccoli filling out the rest. Beyond the shared salmon oil, lamb is the only animal here. That makes it an easy pick when chicken and beef have both been tried and dropped. At 36.9% of dry matter its carbohydrate estimate is the highest in the range, most of that from the sweet potato, and it feeds at 163 kcal per 100g.

£4.38 a kilo across all five recipes. The food comes as 250g, 400g, 600g and 800g daily packs, sold inside a 7, 14 or 28 day box.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats between 515 and 730 grams a day, the exact amount depending on the recipe. That figure rests on around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That puts a day between £2.26 and £3.20, with the lighter turkey and fish bowls at the top of the range because they feed in bigger portions.