Pets Pantry by HiLife Pouches in Gravy: Meaty Chunks review

Our Average band is where both boxes settle, with the typical adult wet food an Excellent band food. Nutritional balance comes back Excellent and transparency Good, with protein and processing Average.

The analysis itself is not the trouble. Protein converts to 38.9% of dry matter, which is a respectable reading for a pouch, and fat is moderate. The meat, the grain, the plant content and the fats are all legal umbrellas here, free to change between batches while the wording on the pack stays the same. Sugars are on the list too, and our scoring has nothing there to reward. Plenty of dogs have eaten well on food written exactly like this, and an Average reading is a comment on those umbrella terms rather than a warning about safety.

Ingredients, as declared: Chunks with Chicken: Meat & animal derivatives (including chicken 4%) cereals, derivatives of vegetable origin, minerals, oils & fats, various sugars. Chunks with Lamb: Meat & animal derivatives (including Lamb 4%) cereals, derivatives of vegetable origin, minerals, oils & fats, various sugars.

Six entries make up each recipe and only one of them points at an actual ingredient. Meat and animal derivatives covers the fleshy parts and by-products of any warm blooded land animal in any proportion. Cereals covers any grain from the best to the plainest. Derivatives of vegetable origin covers almost anything that can be got from a plant. None of these is a hygiene worry and all of them are perfectly legal, but they ask you to buy on the maker's reputation rather than on the recipe.

The fixed point is the named meat at 4%, chicken on both boxes plus beef on one and lamb on the other. Four per cent is a modest declared share, though it is not the whole animal content of the pouch; it is simply the part the label is willing to pin down.

Where the analysis can speak, it speaks well enough. Protein reads 7.0% as fed, which converts to 38.9% of dry matter once the 82.0% moisture is stripped out, and fat is 2.5% as fed and 13.9% of dry matter. The figure that stands out is the estimated carbohydrate at 34.5% of dry matter, more than double the 15.8% typical of adult wet food. The cereals and the plant derivatives are carrying a fair share of the pouch.

Various sugars sit at the end of both lists. Dogs like sweetness every bit as much as we do, and a small amount of sugar will make a pouch disappear. Nutritionally it does nothing for your dog, though its purpose here is easier to guess than most of what the label prints.

The most generous part of the label is its added panel. Vitamin A and vitamin E are dosed in print, followed by copper, iodine, iron, manganese and zinc, each with a figure per kilo. The two boxes carry the same panel, with a scattering of typographical slips in the printed units, so read them as one set of doses and not as a difference between the recipes.

At 71 kcal per 100g these are light pouches, which is worth holding in mind alongside the size of the daily serve. It is a food that fills a dog up more than it fuels one, and for a steady adult with an ordinary routine that is often exactly what is wanted.

Meaty Chunks pairs chunks with chicken and chunks with lamb, again at 4% named on each label. Lamb is the draw in this box, an easily digested and highly palatable meat that often suits a dog who has grown tired of chicken. It also turns up less often in everyday wet food than beef does.

£3.22 a kilo, in 100g pouches sold 48 to a case, the same figure on both boxes.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at about 1183 grams a day and around £3.81, assuming roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own guide asks 500 to 950 grams a day for a dog between 5kg and 12kg.