Platinum Menu Adult Wet: Fish review

Six of the seven recipes settle in our Outstanding band, and the Iberico and Turkey sits a fraction below them in Excellent. The decision here is simply about which animal suits your dog. Wet food does well on our scoring, and the typical adult wet food reaches Excellent. Almost all of these clear that middle mark outright.

Protein and processing reads Excellent on every one of the seven, and nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding across the whole range.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh sardine (40 %), fresh tuna (25 %), fresh trout (18 %), sunflower oil, dehydrated potato, dehydrated vegetables (broccoli, carrots, leek), olive oil.

Start with the 83%, because it is the constant. Whatever the recipe, the fresh animal content adds up to 83%, and each part of it carries a name. That is chicken at 48% with beef at 35%, or chicken alone at 83%, or duck at 42% with turkey at 41%, or sardine at 40% with tuna at 25% and trout at 18%. Nowhere on any of the seven labels is there a meat and animal derivatives entry, a cereals entry or a derivatives of vegetable origin entry. Protein converts to between 42.9% and 53.2% of dry matter depending on which one you pick.

The starch is small and named. Most of the range uses dehydrated potato, the Chicken recipe uses broken rice and the Duck and Turkey uses peas. The carbohydrate estimate runs from 8.1% of dry matter on the Fish and Chicken recipe up to 22.0% on the single Chicken, against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food. Most of these come in at or below the wet norm, and only the rice recipe sits meaningfully above it.

The oils are named too, which few labels bother with. Salmon oil appears on five recipes, sunflower oil on the Fish, and olive oil on all seven. Olive oil is a genuinely good addition, rich in vitamin E and kind to a coat. Dried brewers' yeast turns up on four labels, and every recipe carries a small amount of dehydrated broccoli, carrots and leek.

Moisture is the other thing that sets this range apart. At 65% to 69% it sits well below the level most wet food is made to. The energy figures follow, running from 157 to 178 kcal per 100g where the typical adult wet food is 97. In practice a smaller serving does the same job. That matters if your dog cannot get through a large bowl in one sitting.

A food carrying this much fresh meat needs little added, and the panel here is short. Vitamin D3 at 480 IU and vitamin E at 60 mg sit alongside copper at 1 mg, zinc at 15 mg and selenium at 0.03 mg on six of the seven labels. The Fish recipe prints only the vitamin E, copper and zinc. Calcium is the one figure to keep an eye on, converting to between 1.62% and 3.06% of dry matter across the range, which is generous for adult maintenance.

Sardine at 40%, tuna at 25% and trout at 18%, with no land animal anywhere on the list, so this is the recipe a fish only dog can genuinely be kept on. Protein converts to 51.6% of dry matter and carbohydrate to just 12.2%. Its added panel is shorter than the rest, printing vitamin E, copper and zinc but no vitamin D3 or selenium.

£7.47 a kilo on the Duck and Turkey and on the Iberico and Turkey, in 90g, 185g and 375g sizes sold in cases running from 12 up to 72.

As a guide, feeding those two works out at about £3.73 and £3.98 a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, or roughly 500 and 533 grams. Both figures work from a target of around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Across the whole range the same dog needs between 472 and 535 grams a day, which is a good deal less than a standard wet food asks for.