Simpsons Premium Adult Sensitive: Chicken & Potato review

All four bags land in our Good band, where the middle of the adult dry market sits. The gaps between the four are small, so the choice belongs to your dog and not to us. Two things hold the range back from a higher band: a starch share doing real work behind the meat, and a vitamin and mineral declaration that gives no amounts. The range delivers on its own brief: one named animal at the front and no cereal at all, on a list you can read in the aisle.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (min 45% -Dried Chicken, Deboned Chicken, Chicken Fat), Potato (min 26%), Beet Pulp, Brewers Yeast, Chicken Gravy, Dried Egg, Salmon Oil, Minerals, Linseeds, Vitamins, Yucca Extract, Cranberries, Nucleotides, Mannanoligosaccharides (MOS), ructooligosaccharides (FOS), Glucosamine, MSM, Chondroitin. Naturally preserved with mixed tocopherols.

Each label pins its meat down in the first line: chicken, lamb and salmon at a minimum of 45%, duck at a minimum of 43%. A bracket after each shows how the total is built. Those brackets repay a read, because in the chicken, lamb and duck recipes the animal fat is counted inside the headline figure. Protein converts to 27.2% of dry matter across the range, with estimated carbohydrate between 41.8% and 45.6%, sitting either side of the 46.2% typical for adult dry food.

Potato does the binding, at a minimum of 26% in three of the recipes and 32% in the salmon. No wheat, maize, rice or oat appears anywhere in the range, and that is the whole idea. When a cereal-based bowl has stopped agreeing with a dog, the plainest way to test the theory is to take the cereal out and watch.

The digestive thinking lives in the middle of the list. Beet pulp opens that stretch, a fibre that ferments gently and firms a stool up, and brewers yeast brings B vitamins. MOS and FOS are prebiotics too, aimed at the bacteria of the large intestine and not at the dog. Nucleotides come next, and after them yucca extract, long known for damping down stool odour.

The omega source across all four is salmon oil, with linseeds behind it. In the salmon recipe, salmon stock and sunflower oil join them. That is a good combination for skin and coat. So no bag here is fish free. That only matters if fish is what you are trying to avoid.

The composition closes with minerals and vitamins as two bare line items, with no panel behind them naming entries or amounts. There is no reason to think the food is short of either, since it is sold as a complete diet, but you cannot check a figure that has not been printed. Cranberries finish each list at trace level.

Chicken at a minimum of 45%, built from dried chicken, deboned chicken and chicken fat, with a chicken gravy over the top. It is the mildest way into the range and the natural first pick unless chicken is the ingredient in question.

Per kilo, the chicken and the salmon are £5.62, the lamb £5.87 and the duck £6.45. Every flavour comes in 2kg and 12kg bags, with a 2 x 12kg option.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 238 to 246 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That puts a day's feeding between £1.34 and £1.56 depending on the flavour. For a dog between 15kg and 25kg the label asks 195 to 295 grams, and the waistline is the honest tiebreaker.