Simpsons Premium 80/20: chicken, fish & turkey review

Both recipes finish in our Excellent band with the typical adult dry food a rung below them in Good, and the reason is not complicated. Very little of either bag is anything other than animal, protein converts to 41.3% of dry matter, and carbohydrate stops in the mid twenties, well under the 46.2% a typical adult dry food carries. The chicken, fish and turkey recipe edges the all fish one.

Ingredients, as declared: Deboned Chicken(27%), Dried Chicken(16%), Deboned Salmon(13%), Sweet Potato, Potato, Dried White Fish(7%), Dried Salmon(5%), Dried Turkey(4%), Chicken Fat(2%), Chicken Gravy(2%), Dried Whole Egg(2%), Deboned White Fish(2%), Pea Fibre, Lucerne, Minerals, Vitamins, Dried Apple, Dried Carrot, Spinach, Dried Seaweed, Dried Cranberry, Prebiotic FOS, Aniseed, Fenugreek, Glucosamine, MSM, Chondroitin, Thyme, Marjoram, Oregano, Parsley, Sage. Naturally preserved with mixed tocopherols.

The 80/20 name is a claim you can check for yourself. In the chicken, fish and turkey recipe the animal entries run from deboned chicken at 27% and dried chicken at 16%. Behind them come deboned salmon at 13%, dried white fish at 7%, dried salmon at 5%, dried turkey at 4% and a short run of 2% entries. They add up to exactly 80. The all fish recipe gets there the same way, with deboned salmon and dried herring at 21% each, deboned white fish at 17%, salmon oil at 7.5% and the smaller entries behind them.

Deboned meat is fresh meat, which means most of its weight is water before the oven gets to work, so the dried entries are the ones carrying the finished kibble. Both recipes have plenty of those, and the declared protein of 38% with fat at 18% bears that out.

Potato and sweet potato are the only significant starch, with pea fibre and lucerne behind them doing the fibre work. Carbohydrate lands at 24.4% and 25.5% of dry matter, roughly half what a typical adult dry food carries at 46.2%, which is what a recipe this heavy in meat ought to look like.

The tail of the list is fruit, vegetables and herbs, from dried apple and carrot through spinach and seaweed to sage at the end, along with prebiotic FOS, aniseed and fenugreek. Every one of those is at trace level. What the recipe stands on is its animal content.

The joint ingredients, glucosamine, MSM and chondroitin, appear on both lists without quantities, so we cannot tell you how much of each a bowl delivers. The same goes for the vitamins and minerals, which sit on the list as two unexplained line items with no panel published anywhere. Neither is a safety worry, they are simply gaps in what the label chooses to show, and a food this well built has nothing to lose by showing more.

Energy is not declared either. The figure in the table above is our own estimate, worked out from the analysis, since the bag does not give one.

Chicken leads this one at 27% deboned and 16% dried, with salmon, white fish and turkey behind it and dried whole egg at 2% adding a very digestible protein. Chicken fat and chicken gravy at 2% each are the palatants, both named to the same bird, and this is the higher finisher of the two in our Excellent band. Three animals and an egg in one recipe do rule it out for an elimination trial.

£6.45 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 12kg bags, with the 12kg also offered as a pair.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 230 grams a day of the chicken, fish and turkey recipe and 228 grams of the all fish one. That assumes around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), and comes to £1.49 and £1.47 a day. No energy figure is declared for this range, so ours is an estimate and the day rates above are guides. For a dog of 10kg to 20kg the label's less active column asks 115 to 200 grams, a good deal below our maintenance estimate, and your dog's waistline is the better judge.