Bakers Dog Food Review & Ratings

Bakers is the coloured kibble in the supermarket aisle, and it is the food dog people most enjoy being rude about. We will be accurate instead, which is worse.

Across the 20 foods we have rated it averages 13/100 (Avoid), ranking 293 of 304. Here is a full opening: "Wholegrain Cereals 55%, Meat and Animal Derivatives 20%, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats, Glycerol".

Cereal is the majority of the bag and it is declared as such. The meat is a category term rather than a species - legal, nutritionally real, and it tells you nothing about what your dog is eating this week. Then there is the colouring, which exists so the food looks like meat and vegetables to the person buying it. Dogs are dichromatic. The colour is for you.

None of this is dangerous. Bakers is complete, legal, nutritionally adequate, and millions of dogs have lived long lives on it. Our objection is not that it is poison - it is not - but that almost every ingredient decision appears to have been made for shelf appeal rather than for the dog.

It is cheap, at roughly £0.42 a day, and cheap genuinely matters. It is not, however, the cheapest way to feed a dog well: a plain supermarket bag with a named meat and no colouring usually costs the same or less and reads far better.

Owned by Nestle Purina, alongside Pro Plan and Lily's Kitchen. The range runs 0 to 43. The colours are marketing aimed at your eyes, not your dog's.