Sainsbury's Complete Nutrition Puppy Dry review

Our Average band takes this one, one step under the typical puppy dry food, which sits in Good. Protein and processing comes back Poor with nutritional balance and transparency a step up in Average, and those three read that way for the same underlying reason: the recipe is written in categories. When the animal content, the grain and the fat are all named as groups, there is very little for an assessment to grip.

The analysis adds to it, with protein and fat both modest for growth and the starch estimate well above the puppy typical. The vitamin and mineral panel is the part that is fully declared, and it is properly done.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals (4% Rice), Meat and Animal Derivatives (31% including 4% Chicken), Oils and Fats, Minerals.

Cereals comes first, which tells you the grain outweighs everything else in the bag, and only 4% of it is identified as rice. The term stretches across wheat, maize, oats, barley and the rest, and it lets a recipe move between grains as supply changes without the pack being reprinted. Carbohydrate is estimated at 51.0% of dry matter, comfortably above the 39.0% typical of a puppy dry food. The analysis agrees with the order of the list.

Meat and animal derivatives at 31% is the animal content, with 4% chicken named inside it. In European law the term covers the fleshy parts and processing derivatives of warm blooded land animals. It can hold anything from good clean muscle and organ meat through to much plainer material, and it names no species at all. Protein lands at 27.2% of dry matter, workable for growth without being generous.

Oils and fats is the third line, and it names neither plant nor animal. Fat converts to 10.9% of dry matter, which is on the light side for a growth food, since puppies burn a lot of energy and fat is the densest way to supply it. Energy comes out at 358 kcal per 100g against the 376 typical, so bowls here will run a little fuller than on a richer kibble.

Minerals closes the list, and the additive panel behind it is the most fully declared part of the label. Vitamin A comes in at 17000 IU, vitamin D3 at 1500 IU and vitamin E at 70 mg per kg. Then zinc at 100 mg, iron at 60 mg, manganese at 50 mg, copper at 8 mg, iodine at 2.5 mg and selenium at 0.1 mg. The selenium arrives as sodium selenite, the older of the two permitted forms, where selenised yeast is generally the better absorbed choice.

What is absent deserves naming too. The label declares no moisture, so every dry matter figure on this page uses the 8% assumed for a kibble, and no calcium figure appears anywhere. Calcium is the most load bearing number in a growth food, particularly for a puppy heading for a big adult frame, and a bag listed for every size of puppy leaves that question unanswered.

£1.17 a kilo, sold in a 3kg bag.

A puppy's portion is a moving target. It rises as the pup gets older and as the adult frame it is heading for gets bigger, then settles when growth stops. Follow the pack chart, and let your pup's own shape guide the rest. The label's own guide spans 40 to 725 grams a day across the sizes and ages it covers.