Sainsbury's Complete Nutrition Meaty Loaf with Tripe Selection review

The typical adult wet food is an Excellent band food on our scoring, and this loaf comes in at our Average band, with the wet shelf setting a high line to reach. Construction earns it that place, not marketing. It has 61% animal content with two meats named inside it, no cereal, no added sugar, and an estimated carbohydrate of 2.5% of dry matter where the typical adult wet food runs at 15.8%. Outstanding for nutritional balance, Excellent for transparency. Average is the reading for value and for protein and processing.

What holds it back from a stronger reading is the share of that 61% which stays generic, along with the vegetable derivatives entry. Name those two and this would be a formidable everyday tin. As it stands it is a genuinely good one, and it is a long way clear of the rest of the brand's wet range.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (61%: including Tripe 19% & Beef 18%), Minerals, Oils & Fats (Salmon Oil 0.25%, Sunflower Oil 0.25%), Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (Chicory (as a source of the prebiotic fructo-oligosaccharide) 0.03%).

The first entry does the heavy lifting and, unusually for this brand, it opens itself up. Meat and animal derivatives at 61% is a category term, but the label breaks part of it out: tripe at 19% and beef at 18%, both named, both with a figure. That is a good deal more than most everyday tins are willing to print.

Tripe is the stomach lining of ruminants, and it has been a fixture of the British dog bowl for as long as there have been dog bowls. Rich and digestible, it appeals to dogs enormously, and few ingredients bring a picky eater back to the dish as reliably. It also has a smell that lingers about the kitchen, which is the trade you make.

The oils are named, which the rest of the brand's wet range does not manage. Salmon oil at 0.25% brings marine fats and sunflower oil at 0.25% brings vitamin E and a lighter unsaturated fat. Both amounts are modest, so treat them as a finishing touch. The salmon oil is still enough to put fish on this label.

Chicory at 0.03% supplies fructo-oligosaccharide. That is a prebiotic fibre, and the useful bacteria already in the gut feed on it. At that level it counts as a nod in the right direction.

The numbers on the panel agree with the list. Protein converts to 42.5% of dry matter and fat to 37.5%, so this is a rich tin, with calcium at 1.5% of dry matter. The added panel is fully dosed, running from vitamin A at 2,250 IU/kg and vitamin D3 at 328 IU/kg through zinc, iron, copper, manganese, iodine and selenium.

£1.37 a kilo. Tins are 395g, sold six to a pack, 2.4kg in all.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs around 808 grams a day, which works out at about £1.11, assuming roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is a shade over two tins, and the richer analysis is why the portion runs smaller here than the brand's jellied tins ask for.