Years Cupboard Fresh Retail: Pork Shoulder Sage & Apple Stew review

All three recipes land in our Outstanding band, and there is barely anything to separate them. The typical fresh adult food sits in our Outstanding band too, and gently cooked food is the strongest company on our shelves. Keeping pace with that across three recipes is worth noting. Every recipe reads Outstanding on protein and processing and on nutritional balance, and the same goes for transparency and value. That leaves the decision to the animal in the tray.

It is also worth saying what a band cannot show. These three share a formula and a philosophy, so the difference is the protein and the richness. What your dog has done well on before decides it.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh Pork Shoulder (13.1%), Fresh Pork Heart (13%), Fresh Pork Lung (13%), Fresh Pork Liver (12.5%), Fresh Pre-soaked Buckwheat (7%), Fresh Sweet Potato (6.5%), Fresh Pork Belly (6.4%), Fresh Red Pepper (6%), Fresh Yellow Pepper (5.2%), Fresh Parsnip (4.8%), Cold-Pressed Rosemary-infused Sunflower Oil (2.55%), Fresh Spinach Leaf (2.5%), Fresh Pork Kidney (2%), Fresh Apple (1%), Deactivated Nutritional Yeast (1%), Vitamins & Minerals (1%), Fresh Pre-soaked Quinoa (0.75%), Cold-Pressed Organic Hempseed Oil (0.25%), Taurine (0.25%), Sage (0.2%), Algae Powder (0.05%), Alfalfa Powder (0.05%), Nettle Powder (0.04%), Chicory Root Powder (0.04%), Kelp Powder (0.03%), Chamomile Powder (0.02%), Dandelion Powder (0.01%).

What makes these lists so readable is that nothing is pooled. Instead of one meat entry, each label breaks the animal into its cuts and puts a figure against each. The chicken tray gives leg, gizzards, heart and liver 15% apiece, the pork spreads six cuts from shoulder down to kidney, and the beef names steak, lung, heart, liver and kidney in falling order. Totalled up, each recipe reaches 60% animal.

Moisture is declared between 65.9% and 70.0%, which is simply what gentle cooking leaves in the tray, and it explains why fresh food is served in larger portions than a dried food of similar energy. Protein converts to between 37.3% and 42.7% of dry matter and fat to between 31.0% and 32.6%, so this is a rich bowl by any reading of the numbers.

The carbohydrate side is deliberately small. Pre-soaked buckwheat and quinoa do a cereal's job without being cereals, sweet potato and parsnip fill in behind them, and the estimated carbohydrate stays between 16.3% and 19.5% of dry matter. Quinoa deserves a line of its own. It is one of the very few plants carrying every amino acid a dog needs.

The fat comes from sunflower oil that has been cold-pressed and infused with rosemary, backed by organic hempseed oil. Rosemary earns its place twice, being a natural antioxidant that keeps those oils from going stale on the shelf. Taurine is added at 0.25% to all three even though most dogs make their own, and deactivated nutritional yeast at 1% brings B vitamins along with a savoury note dogs tend to enjoy.

Each list finishes with a run of powders measured in hundredths of a percent: chicory root and kelp, with alfalfa, nettle, chamomile and dandelion beside them. Chicory root is the functional one, its inulin acting as food for the gut's own bacteria, while kelp is a natural source of iodine. The added vitamin and mineral premix sits at 1% and is printed out per kilo of food, calcium included at 4874mg.

Six pork cuts and nothing else from an animal, led by shoulder at 13.1% with heart and lung both at 13% and liver at 12.5%. Dog food turns to pork so rarely that many dogs have never eaten it. That makes this tray useful for a household working around the usual proteins. Yellow pepper and parsnip round it out, with a little sage and apple. It runs to 160 kcal per 100g.

£9.48 a kilo on all three recipes. Tray sizes are 280g and 630g, then 770g, 875g, 980g and 1155g, available singly or in packs of four, and stockists take them as 8 × 320g and 8 × 630g.

For a sense of the daily figure, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition eats roughly 475 to 600 grams a day. The working figure is about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That lands between £4.50 and £5.69 a day depending on which of the three is in the bowl.