Symply Light / Senior review

This recipe finishes in our Good band. The middle of the adult dry category lands there too, and the reason for this one's placement is arithmetic rather than anything on the ingredients list. Pull fat out of a food and something has to stand in for the calories, and here it is starch: carbohydrate converts to 51.7% of dry matter against 46.2% for the typical adult dry food. That is the trade every light diet makes, and it is a deliberate one. Transparency reads Outstanding because the chicken split, the joint doses and the prebiotic all carry printed figures, while protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Average. An older or heavier dog that gets on with chicken is exactly who this is written for, and it does that job cleanly.

Ingredients, as declared: 44.1% Chicken (Fresh Chicken 26%, Dried Chicken 15.5%, Chicken Gravy 1.6%, Chicken Fat 1%), Sweet Potato (18%), Whole Oats, Potato (11%), Pea Starch, Peas, Alfalfa, Salmon Oil (0.8%), Whole Egg, Glucosamine (1,660 mg/kg), MSM (1,660 mg/kg), Chondroitin (1,210 mg/kg), Cranberry, Carrot, Apple, Broccoli, Marigold Flower, Bilberry, Spinach, Prebiotics - Fructooligosaccharides (0.04%), Peppermint.

Chicken at 44.1% leads, printed as 26% fresh chicken, 15.5% dried chicken, 1.6% chicken gravy and just 1% chicken fat. That last figure is the interesting one. The fat share is deliberately smaller than in the brand's standard recipes. That is how the finished food arrives at 10.5% fat and 336 kcal per 100g without cutting the meat itself back very far at all.

Nothing on the plant side is bigger than sweet potato at 18%. Whole oats come next with no percentage of their own, then potato at 11%. Sweet potato carries more fibre and considerably more vitamin A than ordinary potato, and oats add soluble fibre that helps a smaller meal feel like a bigger one. That fibre earns its place on a light diet, where the point is to leave a dog satisfied on fewer calories, and crude fibre is declared at 4.0%.

The joint supplements are printed with real doses attached: glucosamine and MSM at 1,660 mg per kilo each, chondroitin at 1,210 mg per kilo. Glucosamine and chondroitin are the building blocks of cartilage and MSM is there for inflammation, and printed figures are what let an owner decide whether a supplement is worth having at all.

The marine omega 3s here come from salmon oil at 0.8%, and they matter more for coat and joints as a dog ages. Whole egg supplies a small amount of highly complete protein. Both are welcome additions. Read the label twice if you are keeping fish or egg out of your dog's bowl.

Alfalfa rounds the recipe off with cranberry, carrot and apple, then broccoli, marigold flower and bilberry, and spinach last of all. Fructooligosaccharides at 0.04% feed the bacteria in the large intestine. The mineral panel gives zinc twice over, 90 mg as the oxide and 45 mg as an amino acid chelate. Copper is at 10 mg, iodine at 2 mg and selenium at 0.2 mg per kilo. Calcium works out at 1.41% of dry matter, a settled adult level.

Per kilo this is £5.92, and it comes in 2kg, 6kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would get through about 250 grams a day, which works out at £1.48 a day. Behind it sits around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label asks 170 grams for the same dog, below that estimate because this is a reducing diet, so follow the bag and the waistline rather than the maintenance sum.