Tuggs Beef Brigade review

Fresh food keeps strong company on our scoring, and the typical fresh recipe is an Outstanding one. This pouch lands in our Outstanding band as well, level with that middle mark rather than above or below it, which in this field is a genuinely good place to finish. Protein and processing, nutritional balance and transparency all come back Outstanding, the reading you would hope for from a label that puts a figure beside every single entry. Once the 71.5% water is set aside, protein converts to 48.4% of dry matter, which is where a fresh food's modest looking as-fed figures earn their keep.

Ingredients, as declared: Beef 48% (Heart 25%, Trimming 5%, Lung 10%, Liver 10%), Fresh Insect (20%), Broccoli (14.25%), Carrot (6%), Sweet Potato (4%), Quinoa (4%), Sunflower Oil (1%), Brewer's Yeast (1%), Kelp Powder (0.5%), Chia Seeds (0.5%), Minerals (0.5%), Salmon Oil (0.25%), Ingredient highlights Beef Trimming · Beef Lung · Beef Heart · Insects · Sweet Potato · Minerals · Carrots · Brewer's Yeast · Quinoa · Salmon Oil · Broccoli · Sunflower Oil · Chia Seeds · Kelp Powder

Fresh food is mostly water. Start there when you read the analysis. With 71.5% moisture declared, the as-fed protein of 13.8% looks small next to a dry food until you convert it. On a dry matter basis it becomes 48.4%, with fat at 23.5% and the carbohydrate estimate at 20.5%. Gentle cooking, not extrusion, is what keeps the ingredients recognisable in the pouch.

The beef fraction is the reason to look twice. Heart leads it at 25%, with lung and liver at 10% each and trimming at 5%. Most of the beef in the pouch is organ and muscle, not the offcuts a category term would hide. Heart is a working muscle with a nutrient profile to match, and liver carries much of the vitamin and mineral density an animal has to offer. There is one wrinkle: the block is headlined at 48% while those four named parts total slightly more, so the parts are best read as indicative.

Fresh insect at 20% is the other protein, and it is a substantial one. Insect protein is genuinely novel for almost every dog, so it is useful when the familiar meats have caused trouble. It also needs far less land and water to rear than livestock does. The label does not say which insect, which is the one thing on an otherwise fully specified list that goes unnamed.

The plant side is led by broccoli at 14.25%, with carrot at 6% and sweet potato at 4%. Quinoa at 4% is worth a word of its own. It is a pseudo-cereal, the seed of a broad-leaved plant and not a grass. Unusually for a plant, every amino acid a dog needs is in there. That is why a grain-free recipe can carry it without contradicting itself.

The small entries at the tail all have jobs. Sunflower oil at 1% is a light oil rich in vitamin E. Salmon oil at 0.25% is there for the marine omega 3s. Chia seeds at 0.5% add the plant form alongside them, and kelp powder at 0.5% supplies iodine. Brewer's yeast at 1% carries the B vitamins in quantity.

The added panel is dosed per kilogram: vitamin A at 2500 IU, vitamin D3 at 250 IU, vitamin E at 20mg, then zinc, iron, manganese, copper, iodine and selenium. The label also publishes a calcium to phosphorus ratio of 1.4:1, which sits comfortably in the range a complete food aims for, though it stops short of giving calcium as a percentage of the food.

Beef Brigade comes in 300g, 500g and 700g pouches, sold in boxes of 5, 10 or 15. Subscription plans are portioned to the dog, not to a fixed box.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition gets through about 535 grams a day, working from roughly 840 kcal a day on the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. A puppy is the exception to that sum. A growing dog is fed to its own growth curve, and the daily amount keeps moving as it fills out, so expect the box you order to change shape over the first year.