Pets at Home Complete Nutrition Light Adult Dry review

Our scoring puts this in the Poor band where a typical adult dry food manages Good, and the pillar reading Poor alongside it is protein and processing. The gap is very largely about openness. Cereals and meat and animal derivatives are category names, not ingredients, and a label that names so little leaves a recipe no way to show what it is made of. That is a trust question rather than a safety one: the food can still do its stated light job, but you are taking more of the bowl on faith than a fuller label would ask.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, Meat and Animal Derivatives (26% including 4% Chicken), Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Vegetables (1.3% Dried Peas, equivalent to 4% Peas), Oils and Fats, Minerals.

Cereals take the top spot. That is a category, not an ingredient, so the grains actually doing the work go unnamed. They do a lot of it, too: the carbohydrate estimate converts to 53.9% of dry matter, above the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. That is the usual shape of a light recipe, which swaps fat for carbohydrate and fibre, but here you cannot see which grains are carrying it.

Meat and animal derivatives stand at 26% of the recipe, with chicken the only named animal at 4%. Derivatives deserve a fairer hearing than the name suggests, since the term covers nutritious parts of the animal that simply are not fillet, but a grouping this broad keeps its sourcing private. The protein itself is respectable for a light food at 24%, converting to 26.4% of dry matter.

The light mechanics are done properly. Fat at 5.5% as fed is genuinely low, converting to just 6.0% of dry matter, and the fibre lifts satiety so a dieting dog is not left staring at an empty bowl feeling short-changed. At 322 kcal per 100g against the 357 kcal typical for adult dry food, the same weight of food simply carries fewer calories.

The only named vegetable is dried peas at 1.3%, which the label helpfully translates to the equivalent of 4% fresh. The added micronutrient panel is fully dosed, from vitamin A down to selenium at 0.10mg, and methionine is topped up at 1,500mg, an amino acid added where the base recipe would otherwise run short. Preservation is listed simply as antioxidants, with no names given, which fits the label's general habit of keeping detail back.

£1.04 a kilo from the 12kg bag, or £1.25 a kilo from the 2kg bag.

As a guide, feeding works out at roughly 261 grams and about 27p a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition. The sum starts at about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). On a weight plan, portion to the target weight your vet agrees, not the current one, and let the scales settle any argument with the feeding table.