Platinum Vetactive Dry Light review

Weight management recipes rarely trouble the top of our scoring, because taking calories out of a food usually means taking animal fat and animal energy out with them. This one comes in at our Good band, the same placing the average adult dry bag holds. Look past the total and the design makes sense: protein stays up at 25% as fed, or 30.5% of dry matter, while fat drops to 13.2% of dry matter and fibre climbs to 9.8%. Estimated carbohydrate is 39.3% of dry matter against 46.2% for adult dry food generally. Protein and processing reads Average and nutritional balance reads Good, and that Average is what a deliberately lean recipe reads as rather than a sign of a thin one.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh chicken meat 70 %, broken rice, chicken protein*, vegetable fibre*, peas*, lentils*, apple pulp*, coconut oil (with 60 % lauric acid), brewer's yeast*, flaxseed oil (omega-3), canola oil, salmon oil (omega-3), green-lipped mussel extract, rosemary extract. (*dried, cold-pressed, virgin)

Fresh chicken at 70% leads, and this time dried chicken protein sits behind it. Fresh meat is heavy with water at the start and much lighter once it has been through the oven. Dried chicken protein is what holds the protein figure up as the fat comes off. Declared protein comes out at 25% as fed. For a food with this little fat in it, that is a respectable figure.

Broken rice does the main binding. Peas and lentils sit behind it, and they carry a little fibre and plant protein too. Estimated carbohydrate finishes at 32.3% as fed, which is modest for a dry food.

The fibre is where the lightness comes from. Crude fibre is declared at 8%, a good deal higher than an everyday adult food, and vegetable fibre is the named source. It is the one vague entry here. Sugar beet pulp is what that usually means, a fibre that gives the gut some work to do and helps a hungry dog feel like they have eaten.

The fats are picked deliberately. Coconut oil carries a declared 60% lauric acid, with canola oil alongside it. Omega 3s come from two directions here, flaxseed oil for the plant side and salmon oil for the marine. The joint entry is green-lipped mussel extract. Brewer's yeast adds B vitamins. The last name on the list is rosemary extract, a natural antioxidant that stops the fats going stale.

Every trace mineral carries a number. Zinc leads at 150 mg with iron at 75 mg, then manganese at 40 mg, copper at 19 mg, iodine at 3 mg and selenium at 0.2 mg in each kilo. Calcium works out at 1.95% of dry matter and ash at 7.2%, both comfortable adult figures, and growth is not what this bag is written for.

The sizes start at 1.5kg and 5kg and climb through 10kg, 15kg, 20kg and 25kg to 30kg, the larger ones packed as several 5kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 305 grams a day to hold its weight, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label asks 190 to 210 grams for a dog of 12kg to 15kg, and since the whole point here is losing rather than holding, the smaller figure is the sensible starting point.