Sainsbury's Complete Nutrition Meaty Selection in Gravy Pouches review

Among adult wet foods, where the typical entry earns our Excellent band, these pouches finish in our Average band. Two things weigh on that. The animal content is described only as a category, apart from the 4% of chicken, and vegetable protein extracts supply a share of the protein in the analysis. Protein and processing finishes Average, transparency reads Good and nutritional balance Outstanding.

It is worth keeping some perspective. A dog fed these pouches gets a moist, palatable dinner with taurine added at a real dose, and the format keeps portions honest for a smaller dog. The scoring is reflecting how much of the animal side stays under a category term and how much of the protein comes from plants.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (36.5%, including Chicken 4%), Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Vegetable Protein Extracts, Minerals, Various Sugars

Nothing else on the list is bigger than meat and animal derivatives at 36.5%. As a legal category it covers the fleshy parts and by-products of warm-blooded land animals, without saying which ones. Chicken at 4% is the single named animal. That makes the pouch chicken flavoured in the sense the label intends, and not chicken based.

Two plant entries follow and they are worth separating. Derivatives of vegetable origin is a broad term for processed plant material of almost any sort. Vegetable protein extracts is narrower in purpose and just as broad in origin, being a concentrated plant protein, commonly drawn from soya, maize or wheat, added to lift the protein figure. Protein converts to 53.1% of dry matter, which looks striking for a wet food, and this entry is part of why.

The carbohydrate estimate, taken by difference from the declared analysis, is 7.5% of dry matter. That is comfortably under the 15.8% typical of adult wet food. So these pouches are not starch heavy at all, and the vagueness here is about identity rather than quantity.

Nowhere is the label more detailed than the added panel: taurine at 190.4 mg/kg, vitamin E at 26 mg/kg, vitamins B1 and B6, and dosed zinc, manganese, copper and iodine. Taurine is a genuine addition rather than a decorative one and it is more than most everyday pouches bother with. What the label gives no figure for at all is calcium.

£2.44 a kilo, in 100g pouches sold forty eight to a box.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at around £2.91 a day, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is roughly 1193 grams, close to twelve pouches, which is a good deal of opening for a larger dog. These pouches are aimed at small and medium dogs. The label's own guide asks 100 to 550 grams a day for a dog up to 5kg, and 900 to 1200 grams for a dog of 10 to 14kg.