Sainsbury's Adult Farmhouse Kitchen Smooth Pate: with Chicken review

This pate finishes in our Average band, a good way short of the Excellent band the typical adult wet food reaches. The two halves of the label pull in different directions and are worth separating. Protein and processing reads Average and nutritional balance Outstanding. The analysis stands up well: protein at 47.4% of dry matter, estimated carbohydrate at 13.2% where the category norm is 15.8%, and calcium at 1.58%. Transparency reads Excellent, and that is with 4% of the pack the only animal content the label is willing to name. What holds the total down is protein and processing, where a recipe described in category terms gives our scoring little to reward. None of that is a warning about the food in the pack, which is a straightforward, moderate pate.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (60% including 4% Chicken), Minerals, Oils and Fats, Various Sugars, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin.

The headline entry does more work than it first appears to. Meat and animal derivatives at 60% is a big animal share by wet food standards, and the analysis backs it up with 9.0% protein as fed, which becomes 47.4% once the water is taken out. The term does not name the animals or the parts. In law it stretches from prime flesh to the processing by-products of any warm-blooded land animal. The label stays the same while the mix moves from batch to batch.

Inside that 60% sits the 4% that is named, beef in one pack and chicken in the other. Both are good, digestible, palatable meats, and 4% is enough to flavour a recipe rather than to define it. That 4% is the only part of the pack this label lets you plan around when one animal in particular is off the menu.

Oils and fats, various sugars and derivatives of vegetable origin fill out the rest. The oils entry supplies the 5.0% fat, which converts to a rich 26.3% of dry matter, without saying where it came from. The sugars are there for palatability with no level attached. Starch comes only from the vegetable derivatives, used with a light hand. Estimated carbohydrate lands at 13.2% of dry matter, under the 15.8% typical of adult wet food.

Every line of the added panel carries a dose, and the panel is short. That covers vitamin D3 at 140 IU, vitamin E at 30 mg, zinc at 12 mg, copper at 0.5 mg, manganese at 1.0 mg and iodine at 0.3 mg. Calcium converts to 1.58% of dry matter, a comfortable level for adult maintenance, and the fibre reading of 0.5% as fed tells you this is a smooth, soft recipe rather than a bulky one.

Chicken takes the named 4% slot in this pack, inside the same 60% animal block. Because chicken is in so much dog food, an intolerance to it is commoner than to any other meat. A dog with a suspected chicken problem is better pointed at the beef pack. Bear in mind that the unnamed derivatives could include poultry in either version, which is the limit of what this label lets anyone say.

£1.97 a kilo, in a 300g pack, and the same figure across both the beef and the chicken.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat around 966 grams a day, which works out at about £1.90. Both figures rest on about 840 kcal a day, the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. Wet food is not calorie dense, so portions run large, and plenty of owners serve a pate like this alongside a dry food.