Waitrose Adult Grain Free review

This sits in our Good band, level with the typical adult dry food, and everything that puts it there is near the front of the list. Half the recipe is declared as chicken with the fresh portion separated out, and the starch comes from one root instead of a shopping list of pulses. Carbohydrate lands at 42.4% of dry matter against the 46.2% normal for a kibble. What stops it going higher is the looser wording further down, where the fat names a family of birds and the minerals arrive as a single line.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (50%, of which 26% Fresh Chicken), Sweet Potato (32%), Beet Pulp (6%), Poultry Fat, Linseed (3.5%), Chicken Gravy, Minerals, Alfalfa, Yucca Extract (0.02%).

Chicken is declared at 50% of the recipe, with 26% of that going in fresh. Most of fresh chicken is water, and that water goes off during cooking, so the dried remainder is what really lands in the kibble. Splitting the two figures out is a detail plenty of labels skip. Protein converts to 30.4% of dry matter and fat to 15.2%, comfortable adult numbers that need no apology.

The only starch is sweet potato at 32%, and that matters more than it sounds. A lot of grain free kibbles swap cereal for a stack of peas and lentils, with potato behind them. This one simply uses a root. Carbohydrate comes out at 42.4% of dry matter, below the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. The pack does not declare moisture, so that maths rests on the 8% a kibble normally holds.

Beet pulp at 6% is the fibre, and it is the well behaved sort. It ferments slowly, and the stools firm up as a result. Linseed at 3.5% carries the omega 3, and it is the plant form. A dog converts that more slowly than the marine version, so a dull coat needs some weeks before the change shows.

Poultry fat is the one loose thread. Animal fat is a good thing in a dog's bowl and dogs are built to use it. Poultry covers chicken, duck, goose and turkey. The pack does not say which. For most dogs that is academic. In a household still narrowing down what upsets the dog, that one entry keeps the label from being airtight.

Alfalfa and yucca extract at 0.02% round the list off, and chicken gravy is in for the smell and the taste rather than the nutrition. Minerals appear as a single grouped entry with no doses printed. The zinc and copper levels cannot be read off the pack, and that is the one place this label goes quiet.

£3.83 a kilo, sold in a 2kg bag.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at £0.86 a day, on about 226 grams and an assumed daily need of 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The pack's own table asks 191 to 331 grams for a dog between 12kg and 25kg. Let the waistline pick the point inside that range.