Tesco Tender Pate Trays review

Our Average band is where this tray sits, and the pillar readings pull in two directions: nutritional balance comes back Outstanding and transparency Excellent, while protein and processing settles at Average. The label explains the split neatly: 60% of the tray is animal content, a high share by any measure. Only 4% of it is tied to a species, so most of what your dog eats has to be taken on trust.

For us this is a strong field, and the typical adult wet food reaches our Excellent band. The distance here comes from the meat itself, and the analysis is not what separates them. The analysis is genuinely decent: protein converts to 50.0% of dry matter, a strong figure for anything this wet, and estimated carbohydrate to 11.7%, comfortably under the 15.8% typical.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (60% including Chicken 4%), Minerals, Various Sugars, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (0.1% Chicory), Oils and Fats.

Meat and animal derivatives at 60% is the headline and the puzzle. The term takes in the fleshy parts of slaughtered warm-blooded land animals and everything that comes of processing the carcass. That covers material at both ends of the scale, and careful makers use it as readily as careless ones. At 60% of a tray it is doing more than most supermarket wet foods commit to, and the protein figure suggests the material behind it is real meat rather than mostly gel and water. What you cannot know is which animals, or which parts of them, or whether that changed last month.

Chicken is the one species pinned down, at 4%. That is enough to justify the wording on the front and not enough to build an avoidance plan on, which is worth being straight about.

Oils and fats is the other broad heading here. The label never says whether that fat came from an animal or from seeds. Fat converts to 25.0% of dry matter, a moderate level that will suit a dog who does better away from richer dinners.

The rest is short. Palatability is what the various sugars are there for. Chicory at 0.1% brings a little inulin, a prebiotic fibre that the bacteria lower down the gut can live on. The added panel is dosed in print, with vitamin D3 at 140 IU, zinc at 12 mg, manganese at 1 mg, copper at 0.5 mg and iodine at 0.3 mg per kilo. Calcium converts to 1.67% of dry matter, a comfortable adult level.

The label also prints its energy at 82 kcal per 100g. That single figure is what turns portioning from guesswork into arithmetic, and plenty of wet labels still leave it off.

£1.97 a kilo, sold in 300g trays.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to about £2.02 a day, or roughly 1024 grams, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is a little over three trays a day if the pate is fed on its own, and far fewer if it goes over a dry meal.