Sainsbury's Nature's Goodness Meaty Selection Pouches: Adult in Jelly review

Our scoring puts all three pouches in the Good band, close together. The typical adult wet food sits a step above them in Excellent, which is what a strong category looks like. This is still a solid everyday pouch. Both nutritional balance and transparency come back Outstanding. Average is the reading for protein and processing, value sits at Good beside the overall placing, and that is roughly what a decent recipe in a very small serving looks like.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken* (27%), Beef (16%), Dried Carrot* (1%, Equivalent to 8.5% Carrots), Minerals, Chicory Root Powder* (0.08%), Blueberry Powder*, Cranberry Powder*, Spinach Powder*, Parsley*, *Natural ingredients

Chicken leads all three lists, at 27% in the adult pouch and 29% in the puppy and the senior, with beef behind it at 16% and 14%. The animal content is declared rather than described, and protein converts to between 42.1% and 47.2% of dry matter across the three, which is a strong reading for food this wet.

The plant side is deliberately slight. Dried carrot at 1% rebuilds to 8.5% carrot, and the powders after it, blueberry, cranberry, spinach and parsley, are printed at 0.01% where they carry a figure at all. Chicory root powder at around 0.1% is the one with an actual job, since the inulin in it is a soluble fibre the gut's own bacteria feed on.

The puppy pouch is the one that steps away from the pattern. It adds linseed oil at 0.5%, a good plant source of omega 3, along with potato starch, and its fat runs higher at 36.8% of dry matter. Calcium lands at 1.58% of dry matter, which sits inside what a growing dog needs, large breeds included.

The senior pouch trades that oil for glucosamine at 0.012% and chondroitin sulphate at 0.002%. Both are real entries with figures beside them, and both are small. Read the pouch as a dinner leaning in the right direction for an older dog, not as a joint programme in itself.

The added panel on the puppy and senior labels is short and dosed: vitamin D3, vitamin E, iodine and zinc, each with a figure per kilo. Calcium converts to 1.67% of dry matter in the adult and the senior, comfortable for a grown dog.

Chicken at 27% with beef at 16%, the plainest of the three lists and the only one with no added oil at all. Energy is printed at 87 kcal per 100g and the label's feeding guide runs from 400g a day for a 5kg dog up to 1500g for a 30kg one.

£4.17 a kilo. The pouches are 100g, boxed by the dozen at 1.2kg.

As a guide, feeding the adult pouch to a 15kg dog in moderate condition works out at £4.03 a day, and the senior pouch at £4.42. The day rate assumes about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is roughly 966 and 1061 grams a day. The puppy pouch is fed to the label's own growth guide instead.