Waitrose Supreme Wet: Chicken with Potatoes review

Both trays settle in our Good band, a step under the Excellent band wet food usually reaches. Protein and processing reads Good and nutritional balance Outstanding, helped by the named 60% and by a modest starch load. On a dry matter basis that is an estimated 12.5% in the beef, 10.0% in the chicken, against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food. Transparency reads Average and value Good, and transparency is the honest sticking point. Naming 60% of the tray inside a category term tells you a good deal more than most own-label wet food manages, and it still leaves the balance of the animal content unspecified.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and animal derivatives (60% chicken), vegetables (2.0% dried potatoes, equivalent to 9.3% potatoes), minerals, oils and fats (0.2% fish oil), derivatives of vegetable origin (0.1% chicory roots powder)

Meat and animal derivatives opens both lists, and normally that is where the information stops. Here it does not. The label declares 60% beef in one tray and 60% chicken in the other, so the majority of the animal content is named even though the term wrapped around it is a category one. Protein converts to 50.0% of dry matter in both, a genuinely meat-led analysis for something bought with the weekly shop.

The starch comes from dried potatoes at 2.0%, rehydrating to the equivalent of 9.3% potatoes. Potato is mostly starch, a calm and familiar carrier that suits a dog steered away from grain. At this share it holds estimated carbohydrate to 12.5% of dry matter in the beef tray and 10.0% in the chicken.

Two small entries are worth naming. Fish oil at 0.2% carries the omega-3 oils that tell over time in a dog's skin and coat. Chicory roots powder at 0.1% brings inulin, a prebiotic fibre for the useful bacteria in the gut. Both come with a figure beside them, which the umbrella terms around them do not.

The beef tray adds various sugars, which the chicken tray leaves out entirely. Minerals are listed on both, but no dosed vitamin or trace element figures are printed anywhere on either label, so there is nothing to compare on that side.

Chicken at 60% on the same potato base, with no sugars on the list at all. It runs a shade richer than the beef, with fat at 27.5% of dry matter and an estimated 89 kcal per 100g, so servings come out slightly smaller.

£5.00 a kilo on both recipes, sold in 300g trays.

Take about 840 kcal as the daily requirement (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition then eats roughly 1024 grams a day of the beef, or 946 of the chicken. That is £5.12 and £4.73 in turn. The chicken tray carries a little more energy per 100g, which is why it stretches slightly further.