The Pack Oven Baked Dry Food review

This lands in our Average band, a step below the typical adult dry food, and the road it takes to get there is nothing like the usual one. Our scoring rewards named animal content above most things, and by design there is none, so a meat free recipe starts from a gap it can never entirely close.

What it does instead is unusually careful. Methionine and lysine are the amino acids a plant recipe most needs help with, and both are dosed at 5000 mg. Taurine is added at 1500 mg. Without algae oil the long chain omega 3s would be missing from a meat free recipe. The carbohydrate load comes in below the norm for a dry food. Taken as what it is, a considered meat free diet in its own right, it holds up well.

Ingredients, as declared: Dried Potato Flakes, Sweet Lupin Flour (10%), Green Peas (10%), Rapeseed Oil, Rice Protein (7%), Pea Protein (7%), Potato Protein 7%), Dried Sweet Potato (5%), Naked Oats, Hydrolyzed Yeast, Minerals, Peanut Butter, Olive Oil, Dried Alfalfa, Yeast (Saccharomyces Cerevisiae) (1%), Linseed, Dried Pumpkin, Dried Apple, Algae Oil, Dried Chicory (a natural source of FOS and inulin), Fermented Rye (0.1%), Dried Vegetables - Spinach, Tomato, Beetroot, Dried Algae - Seaweed, Spirulina, Dried Fruits - Cranberry, Blueberry, Dried Herbs & Spices - Chamomile, Marigold, Nettle, Turmeric, Parsley, Sage.

The protein is assembled rather than poured. Sweet lupin flour at 10% is the biggest single contributor, with rice protein, pea protein and potato protein each at 7% behind it. Green peas at 10% add more, and hydrolysed yeast and a declared 1% of Saccharomyces cerevisiae round it off. Those middle three are concentrates, the protein fraction pulled out of a plant. A plant cannot match meat for completeness in a dog's diet. That is exactly why the added methionine and lysine at 5000 mg each matter so much on this label: they fill the specific gaps the plant sources leave. Protein finishes at 25.0%, or 27.8% of dry matter, which is a respectable number by any measure.

Nothing in this recipe repays a read like the fats do. Rapeseed oil leads, a well balanced everyday oil, with olive oil behind it for its antioxidants and its reputation with coats, and linseed adding the plant form of omega 3. Algae oil is the entry that really counts. Fish get their own long chain omega 3s from algae to begin with. Taking them straight from the source is the one way a meat free recipe can supply the same fats a fish oil would, and its presence here says somebody understood the problem.

On the carbohydrate side, dried potato flakes lead, with green peas at 10%, dried sweet potato at 5% and naked oats behind them. Carbohydrate estimates to 39.2% as fed, or 43.5% of dry matter, comfortably under the 46.2% typical for adult dry food. You would not expect that from a potato led list, and it speaks well of how the recipe is balanced. Fibre reads 3.7% with chicory supplying inulin as a prebiotic.

The tail is longer than most and better chosen than most. Dried alfalfa, pumpkin and apple sit near the front of it, then spinach, tomato and beetroot. Seaweed and spirulina follow, with cranberry and blueberry behind them. The herb list runs from chamomile and marigold to nettle, turmeric, parsley and sage. Nothing at that end of a list is doing heavy lifting, though the seaweed does bring iodine along with it. Fermented rye at 0.1% is the unusual one, a fermented grain of the sort used to support digestion.

The added minerals are well specified. Zinc comes as a glycine chelate at 120 mg per kilo, and a chelate is easier for a dog to absorb than an oxide. Copper is at 10 mg, manganese at 30 mg, iodine at 1.5 mg and selenium at 0.3 mg from selenised yeast. Selenised yeast is the organic form, where most labels settle for sodium selenite. Calcium works out at 1.11% of dry matter, a comfortable adult level and low enough that a large breed could grow on it. The one gap is iron, which is named but carries no figure.

£8.00 a kilo, sold in a 5kg bag.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats about 244 grams a day, which works out at £1.96 a day. The daily energy target behind that is 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). For a dog between 10kg and 20kg the label's own table asks 174 to 292 grams. Should the two disagree, trust the waistline.