Royal Canin Digestive Care Loaf review

Protein and processing, transparency and value all read Average, with nutritional balance reading Outstanding, which puts this loaf in our Average band. What holds it there is the ingredient list: six category terms, none of them naming an animal, a grain or an oil, which leaves the meat side of the reading little to work with. The typical adult wet food reaches our Excellent band and this sits two bands under it, though the distance is about disclosure rather than about the analysis, which is unremarkable in a good way.

If your dog's stomach has settled on this food, that result is the one that counts, and nothing in our reading argues with it. We simply cannot show you why it works, because the pack does not say.

Ingredients, as declared: meat and animal derivatives, derivatives of vegetable origin, cereals, oils and fats, minerals, various sugars.

Six entries, all of them categories. Meat and animal derivatives tells you the protein came from a warm blooded land animal and nothing further; cereals could be rice, could be wheat, could be both in a different order next month. Writing a label this way is legal, and common in this part of the market. What it leaves you is the analysis and the added panel, the only fixed points on the page.

The analysis reads gently, which fits the brief. Protein converts to 41.0% of dry matter and fat to 27.1%, so this is not a rich food, and the carbohydrate estimate of 16.7% sits just above the 15.8% typical of adult wet recipes. Fibre converts to 6.2% of dry matter, a little more than many wet foods carry, and it is the one figure on the panel that points towards a digestive recipe.

Various sugars appear at the tail of the list, so in a small quantity. Sugars go into wet food for palatability and colour, and they are not the reason a loaf holds its shape.

The added panel is dosed line by line: vitamin D3 at 190 IU, copper at 2.4mg, iodine at 0.3mg, zinc at 14mg, iron at 5mg and manganese at 1.4mg per kilo. Clinoptilolite at 2.2 g per kilo is the technological additive, a mineral that helps the texture hold together.

It is worth saying plainly that none of this is a warning. Royal Canin's digestive range has settled a great many upset stomachs and this loaf may well settle yours. The gap is between what the food does and what the label is willing to show, and only one of those two is a problem.

£13.06 a kilo, sold as packs of 12 servings at 85 g each.

For a 5kg dog the label's own guide asks 382.5 grams a day, climbing to 1062.5 grams at 20kg. On energy alone, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat around 925 grams a day at roughly £12.08, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate).