Royal Canin Dog Food Review & Ratings

Royal Canin is the brand your vet probably mentioned, and that is the whole argument in one sentence. Across the 143 foods we have rated it averages 30/100 (Poor), which puts it 265 of 290 ranked brands - a number that will look low to anyone who has been told this is the serious stuff.

Here is the honest reading of that. Royal Canin builds recipes around a nutrient target, not around an ingredient list, and it is very good at hitting that target. Our score reads the label: named meat first, short recipes, no vague categories. Those two things pull in opposite directions. A bag that opens "Dehydrated Poultry Protein, Rice, Animal Fats, Wheat Gluten, Maize" is precisely engineered and still scores modestly here, because we cannot see a named animal or tell you how much of it is in there.

So use the score for what it measures. If you want a food whose label is transparent about the meat in it, this range is not built that way, and the score says so. If your dog is on a clinical diet, the score is not the right question at all - a renal or hydrolysed food is solving a medical problem, and it is not trying to win a shopping comparison. We flag those separately for exactly that reason.

The breed-specific range is the part we would push back on hardest. A recipe shaped for one breed is a marketing structure more than a nutritional one, and it is priced accordingly.

Its best-scoring food here is Royal Canin Maxi Light Weight Care on 45/100, and the range runs 3 to 45 - a spread of 42 points. Judge the bag, not the logo. Every food below shows its own score and exactly where the points went.