Sainsbury's Nature's Goodness Cans: Turkey in Gravy (6 x 400g) review

These tins settle close together, two in our Good band and the smaller turkey tin a step up in Excellent. Our scoring treats wet food kindly, and its typical member sits in Excellent. A Good reading here still means a competent everyday tin. The distance is mostly construction: half of each tin is named meat, and much of the remainder is water, jelly or gravy. Foods finishing above these push the meat share higher and the added water lower. On all three tins, nutritional balance and transparency come back Outstanding. Protein and processing reads Good on two of them and Average on the larger tin. Value keeps step with each tin's own reading: Excellent on the smaller turkey tin, Good on the other two.

Ingredients, as declared: *Turkey 50%, *Potato Starch, Minerals, *Dried Vegetables 0.6% (Equivalent to 5.8% Carrots and Green Beans), *Dried Fruit 0.35% (Equivalent to 2.1% Cranberries), *Sunflower Oil 0.13%, *Dried Kelp, *Salmon Oil 0.08%, *Flaxseed Oil 0.06%, *Dried Parsley, *Caramelised Sugar, D-Xylose, *Dried Chicory Root 0.02%, *Plant and Citrus Extracts 0.01%, *Yucca Powder, A Complete Pet Food Made with *Selected Natural Ingredients for Adult Dogs

The animal share is 50% in every tin, either split as beef at 26% with chicken at 24% or handed whole to turkey. Both are honest ways to build a tin, and both are printed, not implied. Protein converts to 42.1% of dry matter on the beef and chicken tin and 45.0% on the turkey, which is a strong reading once the water comes out of the sum.

Fruit and vegetables come in at 8%, rebuilt from 0.93% of dried cranberries, green beans and carrot. Cranberry is the eye-catching name of the three, though at this level all of them are a flourish on the recipe rather than a working amount.

The oils are named and modest: sunflower at 0.13%, salmon at 0.06% and flaxseed at 0.06% on the 390g tins. Between the salmon and the flaxseed there is a little omega 3 in the bowl, and the salmon oil is the entry a strict fish-free plan has to notice.

The larger turkey tin is the odd one out behind the meat. It brings in potato starch as a carrier, declares its vegetables at 0.6% dried and its fruit at 0.35% dried, and then adds caramelised sugar and D-Xylose, both sugars, along with yucca powder. All three are down at the bottom where the quantities are tiny, and they are the one part of an otherwise plain label that the recipe could do without.

The added panel is dosed in print across the range, covering calcium, vitamin A, vitamin D3, vitamin E, zinc, iron and manganese, with copper joining on the larger turkey tin. Printed figures on a supermarket wet label are more than plenty of tins offer.

The same 50% turkey in gravy in a bigger tin, but written on a different list. Potato starch takes on some of the carrying, the vegetables and fruit are declared separately at 0.6% and 0.35% dried, and caramelised sugar, D-Xylose and yucca powder appear at the tail. Copper joins the added minerals here, and this is the tin sold in a pack of 6.

The 390g tins are £3.46 a kilo and the turkey sold as 6 x 400g is £2.92 a kilo.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to between £2.76 and £3.59 a day, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is roughly 944 to 1037 grams a day, or between two and three tins.