Sainsbury's Complete Nutrition Puppy Meat Selection in Jelly review

The typical wet puppy food takes our Excellent band, which tells you how strong that field is. This tin lands two bands under it, in our Average band. Protein and processing reads Poor and that is the reading holding the placing down, with nutritional balance and transparency both Outstanding and value Average.

The reason is not really the analysis, which is perfectly serviceable for a wet food, with protein at a good level of dry matter and carbohydrate close to the puppy wet typical. It is that almost nothing on the ingredients list is named. The bulk of the recipe is two category terms and a sugars line. That leaves little to assess and little for an owner to check.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (38%, including 4% Chicken), Cereals (including 1.6% Dried Rice equivalent to 4% Rice), Minerals, Various Sugars.

Meat and animal derivatives at 38% opens the list, with 4% chicken named inside it. The legal definition covers the fleshy parts and processing derivatives of warm blooded land animals. That spans a wide quality range and identifies no species, so a pup with a suspected intolerance cannot be steered around anything here. The analysis is more encouraging than the wording: protein converts to 44.4% of dry matter and fat to 27.8%.

Cereals follows, declared as including 1.6% dried rice equivalent to 4% rice. Carbohydrate is estimated at 13.9% of dry matter, close to the 13.6% a puppy wet food typically carries. Grain plays an ordinary part in this tin, no more than that.

Various sugars is the fourth and final line. Pet food carries sugar for the same reason our food does. The amount at the end of a list is small, and it does no nutritional work for a growing dog.

Ash converts to 11.1% of dry matter and calcium to 1.67%, and having that second number printed at all is worth something on a wet food. For a small or medium breed pup laying down bone it sits comfortably. Large breed growth plans usually aim a fraction lower, which is the note in the list above.

The additive panel covers vitamin D3 at 192 IU and vitamin E at 19 mg per kg. Iron follows at 13 mg, zinc at 19 mg, manganese at 1.6 mg, copper at 0.6 mg and iodine at 0.5 mg. Vitamin A is not among them, which stands out on a puppy food. Energy comes out at 83 kcal per 100g against the 106 typical, so this fills a bowl further than a richer tin would.

£1.37 a kilo, sold as 6 x 400g tins in a 2.4kg pack.

A puppy has no single daily amount. It changes month by month, and with the adult size the pup will reach. Go by the chart on the pack and by the week your pup is in, not by a fixed number of tins.