Home / Dog food / Nutro / NUTRO™ ULTRA Adult Dry Dog Food - The Superfood Plate with a Trio of Proteins from Chicken, Lamb and Salmon
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NUTRO™ ULTRA Adult Dry Dog Food - The Superfood Plate with a Trio of Proteins from Chicken, Lamb and Salmon
A chicken-first dry food that's cheaper per calorie than 9% of the dry foods we've priced and denser than 37% (you feed fewer cups) — $3.54 a day for your 40-lb adult dog.
THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference dog 40 lb · updated 2026-10-18
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. Dots show where this food sits among all 494 dry foods we've verified.
verified 2026-10-18
Composition — dry-matter basis
why dry matter
Calories & cost — for your 40-lb adult dog
Cost per 1,000 kcal: $3.60 — cheaper than 9% of the 360 dry foods we've priced (median $1.93). 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, 2026-10-18 · 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 →
Chicken, Chicken Meal, Whole Grain Sorghum, Whole Grain Barley, Whole Grain Oatmeal, Whole Grain Brown Rice, Chicken Fat (preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Natural Flavors, Lamb Meal, Salmon Meal, Dried Plain Beet Pulp, Brewers Rice, Whole Flaxseed, Potassium Chloride, Salt, Choline Chloride, Citric Acid (preservative), Mixed Tocopherols (preservative), Whole Chia Seed, Dried Coconut, Dried Egg Product, Dried Tomato Pomace, Dried Kale, Dried Pumpkin, Dried Spinach, Dried Blueberries, Dried Apples, Dried Carrots, DL-Methionine, Vitamin E Supplement, Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Sodium Selenite, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of Vitamin C), Manganese Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, D-Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Vitamin A Supplement, Niacin Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement (Vitamin B2), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Vitamin D3 Supplement, Potassium Iodide, Manganous Oxide, Folic Acid, Rosemary Extract
6 ingredients in this list are ones we hold sourced evidence on , and none of them is contested in the veterinary literature.
- Named Meat/Poultry Meal (e.g., Chicken Meal, Lamb Meal) · ingredient 2Well supportedA rendered, water- and fat-reduced concentrate from a named species (AAFCO, e.g., 'chicken meal'). Because most moisture is removed it is a dense protein source (poultry meals commonly around 57-69% crude protein) and it names the species for allergy avoidance.
- Mixed tocopherols (natural vitamin E) · ingredient 7Well supportedA blend of vitamin E forms (alpha-, beta-, gamma-, delta-tocopherol) used as a natural-source antioxidant to slow fat rancidity, commonly chosen as an alternative to synthetic preservatives. EFSA concluded that tocopherol-rich extracts are safe for all animal species and the consumer and are efficacious antioxidants in feed.
- Beet Pulp · ingredient 11Well 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.
- Rosemary extract · ingredient 49Well supportedA plant-derived natural antioxidant (active compounds carnosic acid and carnosol) used to slow fat oxidation, frequently chosen as an alternative to synthetic preservatives. It is an authorized food antioxidant in the EU (E 392); JECFA established a temporary acceptable daily intake for rosemary extract expressed as carnosic acid plus carnosol.
- Brewers Rice · ingredient 12NeutralAn AAFCO-defined ingredient consisting of the small, broken fragments of rice kernels separated during milling. It is a digestible carbohydrate and energy source nutritionally similar to other rice; the 'brewers' name reflects how the fragments are sourced, not lower nutritional quality.
- Flaxseed (ALA omega-3) · ingredient 13NeutralA 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.
Wet ingredients like fresh chicken shrink once cooked — which is why named meals appearing high on the list matter: they keep meaningful animal protein after moisture is removed.
Nutritional twins
Cheaper close matches
Verified foods with a closely matching label at a meaningfully lower cost per 1,000 kcal.
Label-composition matches only: same species, form, and growth stage; same primary protein where both are known; grain-free preserved; protein within 4 points and fat within 4 points, and estimated carbs within 8 points, on a dry-matter basis. Not a medical or quality recommendation.
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.
Nutro FAQ (nutro.com/faqs) adds: 'We have two dry pet food manufacturing facilities for NUTRO products located in Henderson, North Carolina, and Victorville, California.' Some products are co-packed abroad (SO SIMPLE trays made in Thailand per the FAQ), so it is not exclusively self-owned, but dry food is made in Mars-owned US plants — primary answer 'owns' with minor co-pack exception.
source →We could not confirm this from a public source.
source →No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 84 labels we’ve verified for this brand, and no company-wide claim was found either. Most pet foods are only "formulated to meet" AAFCO profiles (a paper calculation) rather than fed to real animals in trials — this is common, not necessarily a red flag.
covers: testing of the food (general; no detail on what is tested). Nutro FAQ.
source →666 PubMed papers (animal/pet filtered) list Waltham Petcare Science Institute (Mars Petcare) in an author address; we checked 200 and 200 really name the company. A floor, not a total.
source →Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Nutro brand page →