Start with exact identity and purpose
Record the product name, brand, pack size and GTIN where one is printed. Formulas can change while familiar branding remains, so keep the label date or observation date beside the fields you transcribe.
Look for whether the food is described as complete or complementary and for the species and life stage stated by the manufacturer. Those declarations define the comparison you can make; they do not guarantee that the food is right for an individual pet.
- Product and pack match
- GTIN recorded if present
- Complete or complementary wording
- Species and life stage stated
Keep composition separate from analysis
Composition describes ingredients or ingredient categories. Analytical constituents report measured or declared components such as crude protein, crude oils and fats, crude fibre and crude ash. One cannot safely be reconstructed from the other.
Category terms may be lawful but broad. HungryPets does not translate a category into named ingredients, rank ingredients by assumed quality, or infer a percentage that the pack does not provide.
Check the basis before comparing percentages
Most printed analytical percentages are on an as-fed basis. Foods with different moisture levels can look very different even when their dry-matter proportions are closer. Moisture is therefore required for a dry-matter conversion.
Energy density is required for a per-calorie comparison. If moisture or kcal is missing, stop at the as-fed value instead of inserting an average. The HungryPets nutrition normaliser makes that boundary explicit.
Finish with provenance and limits
Keep the source URL, the date you saw the label and any manufacturer contact path. A reusable data record needs those details as much as it needs the numbers.
Use the result to identify differences and questions. Questions involving symptoms, disease, therapeutic feeding, growth or persistent feeding problems belong with a veterinarian or appropriately qualified nutrition professional.