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Hill's Science Diet Puppy Small & Mini Beef & Barley Entrée
A feeding-trial-validated wet food — $8.79 a day for your 40-lb adult dog.
THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference dog 40 lb · updated 2026-10-19
The evidence
The Verified Label
Every food on this site gets this exact panel — same fields, same order, sourced from the official label — so brands finally become comparable. Corpus dot-anchors currently cover dry food only — this is a wet food, so anchors are omitted below rather than compared across forms.
verified 2026-10-19
Composition — dry-matter basis
why dry matter
Calories & cost — for your 40-lb adult dog
Cost per 1,000 kcal: $8.93. Our cost comparisons cover dry food only for now. Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.
Standards & ingredients
what this means
why unknown
Safety
Source: official label source (official)· price: Amazon, 2026-10-19 · anchors: 494 verified dry dog foods (360 priced) · how to read this label
The fit
For your dog, specifically
Checked for a 40-lb adult with a sensitive stomach — the same published criteria our finder uses. Change your dog above and these update.
The source material
The full ingredient list
Every flag above is computed from this list. Why order is by pre-cooking weight, and how splitting bends it →
Water, Beef, Chicken, Whole Grain Corn, Cracked Pearled Barley, Pork Liver, Soybean Meal, Hydrolyzed Chicken Flavor, Dicalcium Phosphate, Ground Pecan Shells, Iodized Salt, Fish Oil, Calcium Carbonate, Flaxseed, Dried Beet Pulp, vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of Vitamin C), Thiamine Mononitrate, Ascorbic Acid (source of Vitamin C), Niacin Supplement, Vitamin A Supplement, Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin Supplement, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex (source of Vitamin K), Biotin, Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement), Dried Citrus Pulp, Choline Chloride, Potassium Chloride, Pressed Cranberries, Taurine, minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Manganese Sulfate, Calcium Iodate), Beta-Carotene
4 ingredients in this list are ones we hold sourced evidence on , and none of them is contested in the veterinary literature.
- Fish oil (EPA + DHA omega-3) · ingredient 12Well supportedMarine-source omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) from fish oil. A randomized, double-blinded controlled trial (Roush 2010) found improved weight-bearing in dogs with osteoarthritis, and a 2022 meta-analysis identified clear clinical analgesic efficacy for omega-3-enriched diets and supplements.
- Beet Pulp · ingredient 15Well supportedThe fibrous material left after sugar is extracted from sugar beets, included as a moderately fermentable fiber source (commonly around 5 to 7.5% of the diet). Controlled feeding studies show it supports firm, good-quality stools and short-chain fatty acid production without impairing overall nutrient digestibility, so the 'cheap filler' characterization is not supported by the evidence.
- Flaxseed (ALA omega-3) · ingredient 14NeutralA plant source of the short-chain omega-3 ALA. Dogs convert ALA to the long-chain omega-3s inefficiently: a controlled feeding study (Dunbar 2010) found flaxseed raised serum EPA but produced no measurable DHA.
- Taurine (supplemental) · ingredient 21NeutralA sulfur amino acid that dogs can normally synthesize from methionine and cysteine, so it is not classically essential for them. However, some breeds (e.g., golden retrievers) and some diets are linked to low taurine status and dilated cardiomyopathy: an observational study (Ontiveros 2020) associated non-traditional, largely grain-free diets with taurine deficiency and DCM-consistent echocardiographic changes in golden retrievers, though causation and mechanism remain under investigation.
The maker
Who makes this — and how they back it up
The five questions the WSAVA nutrition guidelines tell you to ask a pet-food company. Every answer is sourced or marked as an undisclosed gap — never guessed. This is the "is it made competently?" axis that star-rating sites skip.
Same source: 'Hill's is currently building a new canned pet food manufacturing facility in Kansas... and in May completed the acquisition of a canned pet food plant in Italy from Nutriamo.' Indicates Hill's owns and operates its own manufacturing plants.
source →Hill's explicitly employs four ACVN Diplomates (board-certified veterinary nutritionists) plus PhD nutritionists per same page ('Our staff of PhD nutritionists, food scientists, flavorists and veterinarians').
source →167 of 212 labels we checked carry an AAFCO feeding-trial substantiation statement.
source →covers: finished-product nutrient analysis (page also says each ingredient is examined and final safety checks run daily on every product; no Salmonella/batch detail on this page). Hill's company-wide page. NOTE: hillspet.com returns HTTP 403 to plain scripted requests; quote confirmed in-session via WebFetch only.
source →179 PubMed papers (animal/pet filtered) list Hill's Pet Nutrition in an author address; we checked 179 and 178 really name the company. A floor, not a total.
source →Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Hill's Science Diet brand page →