Sainsbury's Complete Nutrition Sensitive Cans in Jelly review

This one finishes in our Average band. Wet food generally does better than that, with the typical adult tin in our Excellent band. The pillars underneath are kinder than the headline: nutritional balance Outstanding, transparency Excellent, protein and processing Average. The recipe deserves some credit the scoring cannot give it, because dropping the cereal is a real change and chicory is a sensible thing to put in a tin aimed at digestion. What the scoring sees is a 40% meat block described only as a category, plant material described only as a category, and added sugars in a food sold on gentleness.

That is a labelling verdict, not a health one. A dog with a mildly grumbly stomach may settle very nicely on this. A dog with a diagnosed food allergy needs every ingredient named, which is a job this particular label was not built to do.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (40%, including 4% Chicken), Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (0.1% Chicory Root Powder), Minerals, Oils and Fats (0.4% Salmon Oil), Various Sugars

The most useful thing about this recipe is what has been left out. No cereal entry appears at all, which for a dog that reacts to grain is exactly the change that matters, and the whole list runs to five entries.

At 40%, the animal content sits higher than the brand's standard jellied tin. It is declared as meat and animal derivatives, a legal category covering the fleshy parts and by-products of warm-blooded land animals. Chicken at 4% is the only animal named. More dogs turn out intolerant of chicken than of any other meat, largely because so much dog food contains it. That is worth holding in mind on a tin bought for sensitivity.

Chicory root powder at 0.1% is a prebiotic fibre. It feeds gut bacteria that are already there, and putting it in at a level you can actually see is a thoughtful touch. Salmon oil at 0.4% brings marine fat, and it also means this tin is not fish free.

Two entries pull the other way. Various sugars are in for palatability, declared as a category and without a quantity, which sits oddly on a recipe sold for delicate stomachs. Cassia gum at 2560 mg/kg is the thickener, and it is what gives the jelly its set.

The analysis is the same steady picture as the rest of the range. Protein is 47.1% of dry matter and fat a moderate 20.6%. Carbohydrate is an estimate at 17.6% of dry matter, a shade over the 15.8% typical of adult wet food; the declared analysis gives it by difference. Calcium is printed in the additive block at 0.3% rather than in the main panel, alongside vitamin D3 at 186.96 IU/kg, vitamin E at 18.73 mg/kg and dosed iron, zinc, manganese, iodine and copper.

£1.46 a kilo. The tins are 400g, six to a pack.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 1167 grams a day, coming to roughly £1.70, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is a shade under three tins. The label's own guide sits in the same territory, putting a dog of 10 to 20kg on 1000 to 1600 grams a day.