Webbox Naturals Senior Paté review

This tray sits in our Average band, with nutritional balance reading Outstanding and protein and processing Average. Nearly all of that comes down to naming. The animal share in the tray is generous at 55%, and yet a species is put to just 5% of it. The cereals name only the potatoes at 4%, and the vegetable entry is a category term too. The analysis behind them is perfectly ordinary in the good sense, with protein converting to 47.4% of dry matter and the carbohydrate estimate at 16.8%, sitting close to the 15.8% typical for adult wet food. A dog can eat well from a label like this one. It simply cannot be read.

It is worth adding that our scoring has no way to reward a maker who uses a broad term to protect a good recipe rather than to obscure an ordinary one. The two look identical from outside the tray, and this label gives us nothing to tell them apart.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (55%, of which 5% Chicken)*, Cereals (Potatoes 4%)*, Minerals, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (Inulin 0.1%)*. *natural ingredient, Supplemented levels added at the time of manufacture

The meat term does at least come with a number, which is more than many labels of this style offer. Meat and animal derivatives is declared at 55% of the tray, with chicken accounting for 5% of the whole. Legally the term takes in the fleshy parts of slaughtered warm blooded land animals, along with what comes out of processing the carcass. Good material and ordinary material both fit under it, and the wording on the pack never changes to say which.

Under the cereals heading the label prints potatoes at 4%, which is a curious pairing because a potato is not a cereal by any reading. Take that entry whichever way you like, the starch load stays genuinely small. Carbohydrate works out at 3.2% of the tray, or 16.8% of dry matter, right where adult wet food usually sits. Potato is mostly starch with some fibre, vitamin C and potassium alongside it.

Derivatives of vegetable origin closes the list, carrying inulin at 0.1%. Inulin is a soluble prebiotic fibre, usually taken from chicory root. It is in the tray to give the good bacteria in the large intestine something to feed on. It is a small and deliberate inclusion in an otherwise unspecific list.

The added panel is the most precise part of the label, and every entry carries a dose per kilo. Vitamin D3 comes at 250 IU, vitamin E at 15 mg, biotin at 20 micrograms, zinc at 15 mg, manganese at 1 mg and copper at 1 mg. Calcium is not declared.

What makes this a senior recipe sits in the analysis, not in any special ingredient. Fat converts to 23.7% of dry matter. That is lean for a tray, and energy sits at 89 kcal per 100g against 97 for the typical adult wet food. Portions therefore run a touch larger, and the tray suits an older dog who is less active than they were without asking them to chew.

£5.00 a kilo. The tray is 150g, sold singly or in packs of eleven.

On the standard maintenance allowance of about 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75), that comes to roughly 944 grams a day and about £4.72. Webbox asks less: 600 to 750 grams for a dog of 10 to 15kg.