Holding Out For A Hero (Asda Hero)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Asda Hero
Date:	21/10/03 (109 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Our dog eats it

Disadvantages: Dodgy ingredients

My dog, Katy is a fussy eater. Her favourite foods are Winalot treats and anything we leave over from our meals. But obviously, that isn’t a very healthy diet and she does need something more. We have tried most brands and she tends to get bored of them after a while and will refuse to eat them.

If we had more money, we could maybe try her on Eukanuba or something else that is on sale in the Vets, but we don’t and after all, there is no medical reason to. She is fairly old by now. We’re not completely sure of her age, as we got her from a rescue centre in 1998, but she’s probably around 8 or 9 years old. She’s a Jack Russell-Chihuahua cross, so is a small dog, not overweight and fairly active.

So to sum up, we need a dog food that is fairly cheap, one that is sold at Asda (as that is where we do our main supermarket shop) and one that Katy doesn’t get bored of too easily. Over the last few months, we have been feeding her Asda’s own brand Hero and this has been successful.

Hero does a range of dog food, but we buy the tins. They are priced at 38p per 400g tin, but are currently selling for 33p each as part of Asda’s ‘roll back’ promotion. We buy the packs of six (The only six pack hubby is ever liable to get, LOL!) which cost £1.87, which works out at just over 31p a tin.

The front of the tin claims the dog food contains zinc, B vitamins and natural oils to help with the animal’s skin and the condition of its coat. However, Katy’s skin is dry and flaky and I haven’t seen any improvement since feeding her this food. Asda’s Hero also claims to help the pet’s digestion and its immune system.

The tin has a guide for feeding, suggesting one can a day for a toy dog, up to 4-5 for a large dog. Katy has 1-2 tins a day in two meals plus treats, scraps and the odd tin of tuna shared with our cat.

There are several varieties availab
le, including ones with vegetables in (usually carrots and peas) but when we feed these to Katy, she tends to leave the vegetables uneaten! The flavours we have in at the moment are turkey and liver (4% turkey, 4% liver), chicken and rice (4% chicken), beef and game (4% beef and 4% game) and turkey and lamb (again 4% of each).

The contents seem rather strange overall. I mean, in the meat varieties above, they only have 4-8% meat. So what is in the other 92-96% of ingredients? I always think ‘meat and animal derivatives’ sound horrible – I mean, what is it? Which bits of which animals? Being a vegetarian myself, it’s probably better not to think about it.

Other ingredients are cereals, vegetable protein extracts, oils, fats and minerals. They are ‘coloured and preserved with EC additives’ too. Bizarrely, the turkey and lamb one contains ‘various sugars’!

The meat chunks come in jelly or gravy. As you would expect, the jelly varieties are firmer and less messy than the gravy ones, which are runny. They all smell as bad as each other, but it’s bearable. They do look well made, with big chunks of meat for Katy to chew and she does seem to enjoy them, which is the main thing after all. She occasionally leaves some in the bowl, but normally it all gets eaten pretty much immediately. I’m afraid I can’t describe the taste to you, because there’s no way I’m trying it!

So to sum up, the food is easily available in Asda. It is cheap, but doesn’t look or smell like the horrible low-cost varieties you can get. There is a good selection of flavours around and you can buy them in jelly or gravy. The tins are strong, with a ring pull on the top, which makes it easy to open, even for the kids.

Of course, the final verdict has to come from the dog, so it really depends on whether your pet enjoys it or not. Katy eats it and as long as she continues to cl
ear her bowl, we’ll continue to buy her it.

Summary: