Sainsbury's Nature's Goodness Sensitive Dry review

This lands in our Good band, and so does the typical adult dry food. Within that, transparency reads Outstanding and protein and processing Good, with nutritional balance at Average, which is the pattern of a modest recipe that is straight about what it contains. For a sensitivity food, that straightness is worth more than a richer label that leaves you guessing.

Ingredients, as declared: Salmon (30%) (Salmon Meal 21%, Freshly Prepared Salmon* 9%), Sweet Potato*, Potato*, Dried Peas* (6%), Salmon Oil* (5%), Dried Beet Pulp*, Vegetable Gravy, Linseed* (2%), Minerals, Yeast Products (0.2%, as a source of Prebiotic MOS), Dried Cranberry*, Dried Blueberry*, Marigold Flower*, Turmeric*, Dried Spearmint. *Natural ingredients

Salmon leads the label at 30%, split as 21% salmon meal and 9% freshly prepared. Meal has a poorer reputation than it deserves. It is fish with the water already taken out, which packs more protein into each gram than fresh fish does, and this one is named to the species. Salmon and nothing else came from an animal here, and for a sensitivity recipe that is more useful still, since plenty of foods wearing the Sensitive name never quite manage it.

The energy comes from sweet potato and potato, backed by dried peas at 6%, and no grain appears on the label. What that buys is worth pinning down. Carbohydrate still converts to an estimated 46.2% of dry matter, level with the typical adult dry food, so the grain-free label is about the ingredients and not the carbohydrate share.

Salmon oil at 5% and linseed at 2% look after the fats, and the pairing leans firmly towards omega 3. In a food aimed at delicate stomachs and itchy skin, that is exactly the fat you want.

The digestive support is quiet but genuine. Dried beet pulp brings the gentle, well-tolerated fibre that firms stools. Prebiotic MOS comes from yeast products at 0.2%, and that figure is printed on the label. Halfway down the list sits the vegetable gravy, the palatant, and being vegetable it smuggles no second animal into the bowl.

The closing run of cranberry, blueberry, marigold, turmeric and spearmint is garnish rather than substance. The added vitamin and mineral panel, though, is fully dosed in print, from vitamin A at 17000 IU/kg down to zinc at 75 mg/kg, which is more declaration than many short labels bother to give.

£3.45 a kilo, sold in a 2kg bag.

As a guide, feeding works out at around £0.79 a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, roughly 228 grams, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). For the smallest dogs the label's own table starts at 30 grams a day and climbs to 560 grams for a 50kg dog.