VetSpec SuperLite Low-Calorie Formula review

Our scoring puts this in the Good band. Protein and processing reads Good and nutritional balance does the same. That pair fairly describes a recipe deliberately trading fat and calories for fibre. Chicken in the first two entries carries the ingredient side, while protein holding at 29.7% of dry matter as fat drops to 11.5% is exactly the shape a light food should have. Our Good band also holds the middle of the adult dry shelf, so this one keeps its place there even with the calorie figure estimated and not declared. The fibre standing in for fat is the design, and no fault in it.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (25.7%), chicken meat meal (23.7%), potato (19.4%), oatfeed, peas (4.7%), whole linseeds, sugar beet pulp, chicken digest as gravy (1.6%), chicken fat (0.8%), fish oil, calcium carbonate, sodium chloride, culinary herbs blend (dried seaweed (0.2%), chicory extract as source of fructo-oligosaccharides (0.31%), yeast extract as source of mannanoligosaccharides (0.08%), alfalfa, yucca extract, rosemary, fennel, basil, thyme, oregano, parsley, aniseed), taurine, DLmethionine, Lysine HCl

Chicken is declared at 25.7% fresh with chicken meat meal at 23.7% just behind, and chicken fat is held right down to 0.8%, which is the clearest single sign of what this recipe is for. Fresh chicken parts with much of its water once it is baked, and the meal is what props the protein up in the bag. It manages that: protein converts to 29.7% of dry matter, barely down on the full fat recipes in the range, while fat converts to 11.5%.

Oatfeed is the entry that makes the calorie maths work. It is the fibrous outer fraction left when oats are processed, low in energy and generous in bulk. It does the job a light food usually asks of purified cellulose, with rather more character than that. It is also, plainly, a cereal by-product, and whatever the rest of the ingredients suggest this recipe is not grain free.

Crude fibre lands at 7.7% of dry matter, high for a dry food and entirely the intention, with sugar beet pulp adding both soluble and insoluble fibre alongside the oatfeed. Chicory extract at 0.31% is the prebiotic here, a source of FOS the gut's bacteria feed on, with yeast extract at 0.08% supplying MOS behind it. Fibre at this level is what lets a smaller ration still feel like a meal.

L-carnitine at 250 mg per kilo is the classic addition to a weight recipe, an amino acid the body uses in putting fat to work as fuel. Taurine, methionine and lysine are all added by name too, filling in amino acids that a lighter recipe can otherwise leave a little short.

Whole linseeds and fish oil supply the omega 3, the linseed in the plant form the body must convert and the fish oil in the form it can use straight away. With so little added fat elsewhere in the recipe, those two carry the essential fatty acids almost on their own. It is also why fish appears at all, and a sound way to build a light food.

Trace mineral doses are printed, and most appear twice, first as an oxide or sulphate and second as an amino acid chelate. It is the chelated part a dog takes up best. Iron and manganese both get the double treatment here, which not every label bothers with, and selenium comes as selenised yeast.

£8.43 a kilo, sold in 2kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 262 grams a day. That assumes around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate) and the estimated 320 kcal per 100g, and comes to £2.21 a day. A dog being fed down towards a target weight will sit under that figure, and the label's low activity guide asks 120 to 180 grams for a dog between 11kg and 20kg.