Sainsbury's Complete Nutrition Puppy Smooth Pate review

Our reading places this in the Average band, a fair way below the Excellent band where a typical puppy wet food sits. The pillars split, which is telling. Nutritional balance reads Outstanding and transparency Excellent for a pot that is genuinely meat led with an analysis to match, while protein and processing reads Average.

That split is the whole story of the label. There is a lot of animal content in the recipe, and the calcium figure sits inside the growth range. Four of the five lines are still category terms, though, and an owner cannot check what is never named.

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

A wet food with 60% meat and animal derivatives is carrying a high animal share, and the analysis bears that out. Protein converts to 50.0% of dry matter and fat to 30.0%, with carbohydrate estimated at just 8.0% where the puppy wet typical is 13.6%. On the numbers alone, this is a meat led pot.

Which animals, and which parts of them, the numbers do not say. The term covers the fleshy parts and processing derivatives of warm blooded land animals, and only 4% chicken is identified within it. That is the trade being made here, and it is better understood than glossed over.

Oils and fats and derivatives of vegetable origin are the other two working lines, and both are categories as well. The first can be any fat from any plant or animal; the second any product of treating cereals, vegetables, legumes or oilseeds. Various sugars closes the list, present for palatability.

On a growth food, calcium is the first figure to find, and here it converts to 1.5% of dry matter. That sits inside the range any puppy can be reared on, whatever size they grow to. A big breed pup is properly served on that count at least. Ash sits alongside it at 10.0% of dry matter.

The additive panel runs to vitamin D3 at 140 IU and vitamin E at 30 mg, with zinc at 12 mg, manganese at 1.0 mg, copper at 0.5 mg and iodine at 0.3 mg. No vitamin A is printed. Energy is 97 kcal per 100g against the 106 typical of a puppy wet food.

£3.93 a kilo, sold in 150g packs.

Because a pup's needs shift every few weeks, the sensible approach is to weigh the first few days against the chart on the pack and then adjust to the shape of your dog. From our standard energy estimate, a 10kg puppy in the 4 to 12 month stretch would go through roughly 730.5 to 892.8 grams a day.