Wet Dog Food

This is the most common misreading of a pet food label. A wet food might declare 8% protein and a dry food 25%, and the wet food is not a quarter as good — it is mostly water. Comparing them fairly means taking the moisture out of both, and the analysis on the pack does not do that for you.

The practical version: compare wet foods to other wet foods and dry foods to other dry foods, and look at the meat percentage in the composition rather than the protein figure in the analysis. That one is comparable across both.

Plenty of wet foods, particularly the ones sold as toppers or in smaller trays, are complementary — designed to go alongside a complete food rather than to be the whole dinner. Fed alone for months they leave gaps. The word is on the pack and we put it on every product page.

Once opened, a tin or tray keeps a couple of days in the fridge and should be brought back to room temperature before serving. Food straight from the fridge is both less appealing and harder on a sensitive stomach.