Royal Canin X-Small light weight care review

The banding here comes out Average, one step under the Good band where the typical adult dry food lands. A light diet is always at a disadvantage in general scoring, because the very things that make it work, less fat and more indigestible fibre, are the things a general nutrition measure marks down. The ingredient list does not help either, with maize first and no animal named anywhere along it. The band is not the whole story for a controlled-calorie food aimed at a small dog who needs one.

Ingredients, as declared: Maize, dehydrated poultry protein, maize flour, vegetable protein isolate*, hydrolysed animal proteins, barley, maize gluten, animal fats, wheat, chicory pulp, vegetable fibres, cellulose powder, minerals, psyllium husks and seeds, soya oil, fish oil, yeasts and parts thereof, fatty acid salt, fructo-oligo-saccharides, borage oil, hydrolysed crustaceans (source of glucosamine), marigold extract (source of lutein), hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin).

Maize is first on the list. Dehydrated poultry protein comes second, then maize flour and a vegetable protein isolate. That is a great deal of plant matter at the top. It is one of the ways a food gets its energy down: 341 kcal per 100g against the 357 typical for adult dry food. Estimated carbohydrate still lands at 46.1% of dry matter, essentially the 46.2% that is typical, so this is a calorie-light food rather than a low-starch one.

Fat is the real lever here, held to 12.0%, or 13.0% of dry matter, and most of the saving comes from there. Protein is not given up in exchange, declared at 26.0% and 28.3% of dry matter. That is what you want in a diet food, because a dog losing weight should be losing fat and not muscle.

Fibre does the rest of the work at 6.2%, or 6.7% of dry matter. Vegetable fibres, chicory pulp and psyllium husks are the useful ones, adding bulk and feeding gut bacteria on the way through. Cellulose powder is the blunter instrument, an essentially indigestible plant fibre that fills a stomach and supplies nothing, which is precisely why light foods use it. Nobody pretends it is a nutrient, and it is what lets a small portion still look like a meal.

The dosed extra is L-carnitine at 200 mg per kilo. It is an amino acid that helps move fat into the cell to be burned, and a standard inclusion in weight-control recipes. Glucosamine from hydrolysed crustaceans and chondroitin from hydrolysed cartilage look after the joints, which are usually the first things to complain in a dog carrying extra weight. No printed dose comes with either, so treat them as background support.

Not one animal ingredient is named beyond its family, and fish oil runs through the recipe. A single-protein trial cannot use it, and neither can a dog kept off fish. Near the end of the list sits a fatty acid salt, a processing aid and not a nutrient. Everything else on the label is doing a job you can point at.

£10.66 a kilo, sold in a 1.5kg bag.

Compared on the standard basis, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition on about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), this comes to 246 grams and £2.62 a day. The dogs it is meant for are far smaller, and the label asks 22 grams a day at 1kg and 62 grams at 4kg, which is where your own daily figure will sit.