Wainwright's Adult Trays With Superfoods: Organic Chicken with Superfoods review

Both trays finish in our Good band and they finish there together, so there is no better and worse variety in this pair. This is a category that scores strongly with us, and the typical adult wet food reaches our Excellent band. These trays sit a step under the middle of that shelf.

What earns the placing is the construction. Sixty per cent named organic meat, and a moisture figure that is declared and not assumed. The beef converts to an estimated 8.3% carbohydrate on a dry matter basis and the chicken to 2.7%, against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food. The thin end of the label is what holds them back: no vitamins are declared beside the three trace elements, and the last few entries carry no percentages. Nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding on the pair, with protein and processing and value both reading Good.

Ingredients, as declared: Freshly Prepared Organic Chicken (60%), Organic Pumpkin (2%), Organic Beetroot (2%), Organic Sesame Oil, Organic Chamomile, Minerals

Freshly prepared organic meat at 60% is the first thing on both labels and the largest thing in both trays. Beef and chicken are the two meats British dogs meet most often. Both are highly palatable and both are easy on a normal digestion. Protein converts to 52.8% of dry matter on each tray. On a wet food, that is a genuinely meat-led analysis.

The plant side is deliberately small. The only vegetables are organic pumpkin at 2% and organic beetroot at 2%, and neither list carries any cereal, potato or pulse. That is why the carbohydrate estimate lands so low: 8.3% of dry matter in the beef tray, 2.7% in the chicken, against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food.

Organic sesame oil carries the added fat. It is an unusual pick for a dog food and a welcome one, a pressed seed oil named for what it is rather than a general vegetable oil. Organic chamomile closes the food list at trace level, a calming kitchen herb by reputation and far too small a quantity to be the reason you choose the tray.

The additive panel is trace elements in chelated form, with zinc at 15.2 mg, manganese at 3.2 mg and iodine at 0.5 mg. Chelating a mineral to amino acids is the more considered way of adding it, and each of the three is printed with its dose. Nothing else is declared, which leaves the meat itself carrying the rest of the micronutrition.

Organic chicken at 60%, the richer tray with fat at 30.6% of dry matter and an estimated 82 kcal per 100g. Between the two, this tray holds the least carbohydrate, an estimated 2.7% of dry matter, about as close to a plain meat and vegetable tray as this range gets.

£8.60 a kilo, in a single 150g tray, and the same figure on both flavours.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition wants about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). On the beef tray that comes to roughly 1094 grams, or £9.41, and on the chicken tray to roughly 1027 grams, or £8.83. The label's own guide for a dog of 12kg to 25kg is 600 to 1050 grams a day.