"Grain-free" gets marketed as an upgrade for every dog on the shelf, but the truth is only a minority actually need one - a genuine grain intolerance is uncommon, and for most dogs swapping to grain-free changes the ingredient list without changing anything that matters to them. It's a real answer for the dogs it's actually for, and no answer at all for everyone else.

This recipe replaces cereal grain with potato and buckwheat as the carbohydrate base, while keeping the same single-protein approach as Burns' other sensitive recipes: duck is the only animal protein in the bowl. It's a complete food for adult and senior dogs, rounded out with peas, duck fat and a small amount of seaweed.

• Complete grain-free food for adult and senior dogs
• Composition: Potato 48%, Buckwheat 27%, Dried Duck 19%, Duck Fat, Peas, Seaweed 0.5%, Minerals
• Protein 20%, Fat 8%, Fibre 2%, Ash 7%
• Calcium 1.2%, Phosphorus 0.85%, Sodium 0.18%
• Omega-6 2.21%, Omega-3 0.22%
• 6KG bag

On "grain-free". Potato and buckwheat replace the cereal grain here, but that only helps if a dog's reaction is genuinely to grain rather than to a mainstream protein - Burns' non-grain-free duck recipe uses exactly the same single duck protein source. If a vet has identified a grain intolerance specifically, this is the right choice; if the wider concern is a food sensitivity in general, the meaningful difference between the two recipes is the carbohydrate, not the protein.

Who it's for: adult and senior dogs with a diagnosed or suspected grain intolerance who also need a single novel protein, rather than dogs whose sensitivity is to a mainstream meat alone.