Royal Canin Gastrointestinal Loaf review

Ingredients, as declared: Pork by-products, poultry by-products, rice, salmon, sunflower oil refined*, powder cellulose, minerals, pork blood products, dried beet pulp, fish oil*, yeasts and part thereof, marigold meal. Highly digestible ingredients: Highly digestible protein sources: 52%, *highly digestible fat sources: 1.5%.

Pork by-products lead the label, with poultry by-products second and rice third. Salmon is the one species named as a whole meat, and pork blood products turn up further down. The percentage Royal Canin chooses to print is not a meat figure but a digestibility one: highly digestible protein sources at 52%, and the fat sources it marks with an asterisk at 1.5%.

Powdered cellulose and dried beet pulp carry the fibre between them. Cellulose passes through a dog largely untouched, which is precisely the reason it earns a place in a recipe where stool bulk and transit are the things being steered. Yeasts and part thereof appear as well, and marigold meal finishes the list.

For anyone tracking what their dog reacts to, the animal side here takes in pork twice over, salmon, fish oil and a poultry entry that names a category and no bird at all. Chicken, turkey, duck and goose all remain possible without the label saying which. Rice puts grain in the recipe too. None of that is hidden, but it does mean this is a digestive diet rather than an exclusion one.

On a dry matter basis the panel gives 34.5% protein and 22.9% fat, with crude fibre at 4.7%, crude ash at 10.1% and the carbohydrate estimate at 27.8%. Moisture is declared at 74.2% and energy at 106 kcal per 100g. Starch sitting that high in a wet food is deliberate in a recipe aiming for gentle, easily absorbed calories, not an accident of the mix.

The dosed additions are set out in detail: vitamin A at 1700 IU, vitamin D3 at 190 IU, vitamin E at 150mg and vitamin C at 88mg, taurine at 0.6g. Then iron at 8mg, iodine at 0.62mg, copper at 3mg, manganese at 8.1mg, zinc at 24mg and selenium at 0.04mg per kilogram. Clinoptilolite at 2.5g is listed as a technological additive. The feeding table climbs from 312 grams a day at 5kg through 883 grams at 20kg to 2013 grams at 60kg. The vet running the case is the one to say what your dog actually gets.

It is sold as a single 400g loaf.