Vet's Kitchen Healthy Weight review

This one comes out in our Good band, and so does the typical adult dry food, which is a fairer result than it first looks for a recipe designed around a lower calorie count. Pulling fat down to 9.8% of dry matter necessarily leaves more room for starch, and carbohydrate lands at 49.9%. Protein holds up at 27.2% of dry matter, so the meat has not been thinned to make the numbers work. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Average, transparency reads Outstanding and value Good. Judge it on the job it was built for, which is getting weight off a dog without leaving them staring at an empty bowl by mid morning.

Ingredients, as declared: Brown Rice 40.5%, Chicken 34% (including Dried Chicken 29%, Chicken Gravy 3% and Chicken Fat 2%), Oats, Beet Pulp, Salmon Oil, Minerals, Brewer's Yeast, Glucosamine 355 mg/kg, Methylsulfonylmethane 355 mg/kg, Mannanoligosaccharides 315 mg/kg, Fructooliogosaccharides 315 mg/kg, Chondroitin Sulphate 250 mg/kg, Yucca Schigidera Extract, Seaweed Oil Extract, Beta Glucans, Nucleotides.

Brown rice at 40.5% comes first on the list, a large part of why the recipe works as a diet food. It brings bulk and fibre with fewer calories per gram than fat carries, and it keeps the bran and germ that white rice has had polished off.

Chicken at 34% splits into dried chicken at 29%, chicken gravy at 3% and chicken fat at 2%, so almost all of the meat that counts is in the dried form. Holding the chicken fat to 2% is what pulls the whole analysis down to 9% fat as fed, and it is done by leaving fat out rather than by watering the meat down.

Fibre is the quiet worker in any weight recipe. Beet pulp and oats bring it to 4.9% of dry matter, which slows a meal down and helps a hungry dog feel fed for longer. Brewer's yeast adds B vitamins, and yucca extract is there for what happens at the other end of the dog.

Nothing in the supplement list is left vague. Glucosamine and MSM are printed at 355 mg/kg each, chondroitin sulphate at 250 mg/kg, both prebiotics at 315 mg/kg, and L-carnitine at 541mg, the amino acid used in fat metabolism that most slimming diets include. Being able to read the doses is what separates a supplement from a marketing word.

A live Enterococcus faecium culture sits alongside beta glucans and nucleotides. Zinc, iron and copper each come partly as chelates, and a dog's gut takes those up more easily. Methionine at 1,290mg per kilo rounds the panel off.

£5.03 a kilo, in 3kg, 7.5kg and 15kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 247 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £1.24 a day. A dog on a reduction plan will be eating under that by design, and the label's own table asks 140 to 275 grams for a dog between 11kg and 25kg.