Tesco Adult Cans Mixed Selection: Loaf review

Our Good band is where all three textures finish, with the loaf a whisker behind the other two. Nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding, while protein and processing and value each read Good.

Wet is a category that does well with us, and the middle of the shelf sits in our Excellent band. A little ground still separates this tin from the typical one. It is ground made up of naming, and safety does not come into it. These are complete foods with a printed energy figure and a dosed vitamin panel, and a great many dogs have grown up on them.

Ingredients, as declared: Loaf with Chicken: Meat and Animal Derivatives (42%, including 4% Chicken), Cereals, Minerals, Various Sugars. Loaf with Beef: Meat and Animal Derivatives (42%, including 4% Beef), Cereals, Minerals, Various Sugars. Loaf with Lamb: Meat and Animal Derivatives (42%, including 4% Lamb), Cereals, Minerals, Various Sugars. Loaf with Turkey: Meat and Animal Derivatives (42%, including 4% Turkey), Cereals, Minerals, Various Sugars.

Meat and animal derivatives is a legal term. It covers the fleshy parts of slaughtered warm-blooded land animals and the products of processing their carcasses. The material behind it runs from very good to very ordinary. With no animal and no cut named, the mix can be composed differently from one batch to the next. What each label does commit to is 4% of the species on the front, so the lamb tin holds at least 4% lamb. The gravy and jelly tins declare the whole animal fraction at 44% and the loaf at 42%.

Cereals is the same kind of heading applied to grain, so the tin could be built on rice, wheat, maize or barley without the wording changing. It carries a fair share of the recipe: estimated carbohydrate converts to 21.1% of dry matter in the gravy and jelly and 20.5% in the loaf, against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food. Protein comes out at 39.5% of dry matter in the chunks and 42.5% in the loaf, which is respectable for food at this moisture level.

Various sugars are added for palatability. A little sugar in a gravy is a long-standing trick of the trade, and dogs like sweetness just as we do. It is still an ingredient plenty of owners would prefer to see left out. Cassia gum does the setting, declared at 0.4 g per kilo in the gravy, 1.2 g in the jelly and 1.4 g in the loaf.

Short as the added panel is, every entry carries a dose. Vitamin A comes at 1250 IU, vitamin D3 at 250 IU, zinc at 20 mg, manganese at 2.5 mg and iodine at 0.5 mg per kilo. The labels say those figures hold for all varieties. Calcium converts to 2.11% of dry matter in the chunks and 2.0% in the loaf. That sits comfortably above what an adult dog needs, and well short of a problem.

One thing this label does better than many wet labels is print its energy. The tin runs at 92 kcal per 100g, or 96 in the loaf. Knowing that is what lets you portion properly, and on a list this brief it is a small piece of honesty worth crediting.

A smooth loaf rather than chunks, which suits a dog with few teeth left to work with or one that eats round the jelly and leaves it. The animal fraction is declared a little lower at 42%, protein converts a little higher at 42.5% of dry matter, and the tin is 395g where the others are 400g.

£1.36 a kilo for the gravy and the jelly, each sold as 12 x 400g, and £1.69 a kilo for the loaf, sold as 12 x 395g.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to about £1.24 a day on the gravy or the jelly and about £1.48 a day on the loaf. Around 840 kcal a day sits behind that (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at roughly 913 grams of the chunks or 875 grams of the loaf, so a box of twelve covers a dog that size for about five days.