Royal Canin Maxi Light Weight Care review

This comes out Average, one rung under the Good band where most of the adult dry shelf clusters. The reduced-energy design is not what puts it there. Protein holds up at 29.3% of dry matter while fat drops to 12.0% and estimated carbohydrate reaches 40.3%, below the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. That is very much the balance a slimming food wants. The list pulls the reading down instead: an unnamed bird, unnamed fats, maize gluten and wheat gluten lifting the protein figure, and cellulose powder standing in for whole-food fibre. That is what protein and processing and transparency are reading when they both come out Average. For an owner whose problem is a big dog and a vanishing waistline, the food still does the thing it was bought to do.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated poultry proteins, vegetable fibres, maize, barley, maize flour, maize gluten, wheat gluten*, hydrolysed animal proteins, wheat, animal fats, beet pulp, cellulose powder, fish oil, minerals, yeasts products, fructo-oligosaccharides, psyllium husks and seeds, soya oil, glucosamine from fermentation, marigold meal, hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin). *L.I.P.: protein selected for its very high digestibility.

Dehydrated poultry proteins lead and vegetable fibres come straight after them, and that pairing tells you the whole strategy in two lines. Meat first keeps the protein figure up at 27.0% as fed while the calories come down, and fibre in second place fills the bowl with material that carries very little energy. Poultry is the usual catch-all word here, wide enough for goose, duck, turkey or chicken alike.

Fibre here is not one ingredient but a small committee. Vegetable fibres and beet pulp handle the everyday work, and the psyllium husks and seeds bring a soluble fibre that swells with water. The gut's own bacteria are fed by fructo-oligo-saccharides. Cellulose powder is the blunt instrument that gets crude fibre all the way to 11.4%. Cellulose is close to indigestible, which is exactly why a light food uses it. It is a processed bulking fibre, not something out of the vegetable drawer.

The energy side has been pulled down from both directions. Fat is held to 11.0% as fed and 12.0% of dry matter, low for a dry food, and the finished energy is 320 kcal per 100g. The practical effect is that a dog on a reduced ration still gets a bowl worth eating. L-carnitine at 200 mg per kilo sits behind that. It is an amino acid derivative, and weight recipes use it for its part in getting fatty acids to where they are burned.

Protein comes from more than the bird. Maize gluten and wheat gluten both appear, and each adds plant protein to the declared total. A dog puts less of that to work than it would the animal equivalent. The wheat gluten carries the maker's own note that it is selected for very high digestibility, which is a fair claim for that ingredient, though it stays a plant protein whatever the processing. Barley and maize fill in the rest of the plant side.

The joint pair is glucosamine and chondroitin. The glucosamine is made by fermentation here, not taken from crustacean shells, and the chondroitin comes from hydrolysed cartilage. Neither carries a dose, so treat them as background support for a heavy frame. Fish oil supplies the omega 3s, and marigold meal brings the lutein.

The added nutrition is dosed line by line. Zinc sits at 133 mg, manganese at 49 mg and iron at 46 mg, with copper at 10 mg, iodine at 3.9 mg and selenium at 0.09 mg per kilo. Vitamin A at 21000 IU and vitamin D3 at 900 IU sit above those. Clinoptilolite is present at 5 g per kilo as a processing aid. It is a complete panel, which matters more than usual on a food a dog eats less of.

£5.26 a kilo, sold in a 12kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would need around 262 grams a day, coming to £1.38, on about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). A dog eating this food is likely to be much bigger and on a deliberate reduction. Set the amount against the weight you are aiming for, not the weight on the scales today.