Tesco Complete & Balanced Nutrition Adult Wet review

Average is the band, with nutritional balance and transparency both Outstanding, while protein and processing reads Poor. A four-entry label does that: with one species named at 4%, no grain identified, no plant content declared and sugar on the list, there is very little for protein and processing to work with. The wet category as a whole scores well and its midpoint reaches our Excellent band, so on paper this tin has a long way to travel.

None of it is a verdict on safety, and it should not read like one. The analysis is ordinary in the good sense, with protein at 39.5% of dry matter and fat at 26.3%. The food is complete, the vitamin panel is dosed, and dogs have eaten well from tins like this for decades. What you are buying is the maker's word rather than a recipe you can read, and it is fair to know that before you fill the trolley.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (44%, including 4% Chicken), Cereals, Minerals, Various sugars.

Meat and animal derivatives is a legal heading that takes in the fleshy parts of slaughtered warm-blooded land animals and everything that comes of processing their carcasses. It covers material at both ends of the quality range, and because it names neither species nor cut, the contents can be composed differently from batch to batch. The fixed points on this label are the 44% animal fraction and the 4% of it that is chicken.

Cereals works the same way for grain: rice, wheat, maize or barley could all be behind the word without the label changing. Carbohydrate estimates to 21.1% of dry matter against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food. Grain is carrying more of this tin than it would in a meat-led recipe. Protein still converts to a reasonable 39.5% of dry matter, and fat to 26.3%.

Various sugars are added because dogs enjoy them, and cassia gum at 1.2 g per kilo gives the tin its set. Neither is unusual in supermarket wet food, and neither is something the recipe strictly needs.

The added panel is short and properly dosed: vitamin A 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. Calcium converts to 2.11% of dry matter, above what an adult dog needs without being anywhere near a concern. The label also prints 92 kcal per 100g. Many wet labels never manage that, and it is what makes portioning straightforward.

£1.38 a kilo, sold as a single 400g tin.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at about £1.26 a day, or roughly 913 grams, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Wet food carries few calories for its weight, so daily portions look large. Plenty of owners serve a tin like this alongside a dry food.