Looking past the recent vegan drama, have you ever wondered why your pet might not like particular foods? Have you ever actually tasted the food yourself?
I have, and some taste more like a chemistry lab than actual nutrition.
A friend of mine back in middle school did a science project on what cat food tastes the best. He used his cat as the main experiment, but when he presented his project he also had samples for everyone to try and vote on their favorite. The cat liked Science Diet. The consensus among our classmates was Meow Mix.
His real science project: How many classmates can he get to eat cat food.
The result: more than you’d expect.
Interesting. At the end of the day though, what matters is what’s healthy for your pet and what they like best.
I never suggested that humans and pets have the same taste buds and appetites, but when your dog refuses to eat a dog treat, and you taste it yourself and it also tastes like chemical garbage, then it only stands to reason that those particular dog treats are trash.
I didn’t realize you were trying to present some sort of argument here, I was just sharing a fun story that answered the post title.
All food tastes like chemicals. Taste is a function of chemical receptors on your tongue. Btw you are made entirely of chemicals, but many people have already told you this today.
I don’t know the exact brand of dog treats, but they tasted like they were soaked in diesel fuel and dried out. That’s what I mean when I say they tasted like chemicals.
Whatever brand they were, they were colored red and green. I don’t even think ants would eat those things.
Animals don’t taste the same way we do. For example, cats don’t have the receptors for tasting sweet things…so they can barely detect sweetness at all.
Dogs only have 25% as many taste buds as humans, so most things have a very mutes taste for them. Plus, every dog I’ve ever had absolutely LOVED cat shit covered in kitty litter, so I never put much faith in their sense of taste.
Yeah, they’ll have flavors they like more or less, just like us, but even we can’t trust our sense of taste as a metric for nutrition…if we could, we’d all be addicted to brocolli and spinach instead of processes foods and sugar.
How do you know that the only reason you don’t like cat shit is because you have a cultural revulsion to it?
My wife fucking loves coagulated blood. Like just big old chunks of blood which was packed into casings and boiled until it became a massive chunk of scab. Meanwhile I legit cannot be in the same room with it. As far as I’m concerned it might as well be cat shit
I recall seeing in a special card at a Chinese restaurant “Pigs Blood with Mixed Vegetable”. Sounds awful to me but some people must like it.
black pudding? white pudding?
I also wouldn’t know what my dog thinks of the taste of cat shit, as that’s not on his menu. Not sure where that thought came from even, that’s not even food.
I’m referring to actual food products for pets. If the pet doesn’t like it, there’s probably a reason why, and that reason is likely that companies tend to make substandard foods not suitable for human consumption for pets.
lmao nobody feeds their dog cat shit. but they try to eat it anyway because they are dogs and they’ll eat a dirty diaper if you don’t throw it away out of reach. smh
Man y’all got some dumb dogs out there apparently.
I had a Jack Russell who was crazy about eating out of the litterbox. Just horrifying, obviously. Maybe it tastes like meat, idk, who knows what it smells like to a dog.
Guess what?
If my dog refuses to eat what’s supposed to be a dog treat, and I try it and it tastes like a chemistry lab, then I think me and my dog both agree it tastes more like chemicals and more toxic than garbage.
Even if humans and animals have different taste buds, if the food tastes wrong, ain’t nobody gonna eat it.
I ate a dog treat that I’m 90% sure was just a bone shaped nilla wafer.
I don’t doubt you a bit, I tasted one of those when I was a kid. Totally edible. A bit bland to me, but edible.
But that was a different brand apparently. I’m not sure what brand the recent dog biscuit treats was, as they were donated in a Ziploc bag by a friend, but those tasted like chemical hell.
Our friend didn’t mean anything wrong, he was just trying to help, but those particular treats ended up tossed in the trash. Honestly I don’t think the ants would even eat those things.
Edit: The old ones that actually tasted edible were all tan in color, but these new chemical infused ones were all colored red or green. Something just wasn’t right with those.
I mean, animals don’t necessarily experience taste in the same ways humans do. What tastes terrible to me may still be very appealing to a dog or cat etc., regardless of taste.
The way my dog licks his balls you’d think they taste really good, but they didn’t taste great to me
I’ve licked some good balls before tbh
If you could reach yours, you would too
A dog eats poop. That might as well say that taste is experienced very differently.
You got a dumbass dog then, our adopted stray dog won’t even shit anywhere near our apartment, let alone try eating it…
Exactly. We like sweet things as this is our way to detect glucose for our brain; salty things for minerals, etc. Our pets diets are different, so are their taste preferences. Iirc, a totally blunt piece of dried food tastes great for a cat, since they seek protein more than anything.
Yup, cats can’t taste sweetness for that reason, while birds don’t have receptors for spice and can eat chillies easily.
That’s just the taste buds themselves, additionally:
- A large part of our taste response is tied to smell. This is why food tastes different when sick. It’s also hard to try yourself because you can “smell” through the back of your throat too
- the air around us will affect taste perception, which is why some foods taste better or worse on a plane
- genetic factors exist, such as how some people taste cilantro/parsley as soapy
That’s why hospital food seemed so next level bland, everything smelled like “clean.”
I have the cilantro soap gene. Never heard of the taste of parsley being affected the same way.
True. Still, have you ever tasted a chemistry set?
I did when I was 10 years old. It’s a wonder I’m still alive. Raw chemicals are not nutrition.
What constitues chemicals for you? I agree with your point- if your dog doesn’t like the treat and you find it tastes unnatural, I agree it’s maybe a bad treat/crappy quality treat.
But “chemical” is not really a descriptor for taste- everything is chemicals. Sugar is a chemical. There are chemicals in natural foods such as meats, veggies, fruits, it’s all chemicals. I think you’re trying to say that the treats taste unnatural or overly processed?
Maybe you’re right, maybe ‘chemical’ wasn’t the best way to describe it. I can definitely agree that those treats tasted completely unnatural.
I mean like they taste like they were soaked in diesel fuel and dried out unnatural. That’s why I described it as a chemical taste.
Oddly enough, besides meat, my dogs favorite food is kibble. Dry kibble. It took me years to train him to wait for his food… Hes much better now but he still swallows everything whole. And he loves it so much my husband uses his normal food as treats while I still try to get him that higher level rewards (I.e. cheese, nicer treats, etc).
Also, he doesn’t like wet or “fresh” dog food 🤷♀️
I do concur with everyone on this thread though that our dogs taste buds are significantly different than ours. Ive tried a few and it doesn’t matter what I like. Dogs are different
Try a dog treat that tastes like it was soaked in diesel fuel and dried out. That’s what I mean by the chemical taste.
Honestly I wonder if those treats were possibly poisoned…
There’s a plethora of other animal foods, he’s not gonna starve. He’s also not gonna eat anything that I can’t stand the taste of either.
I got some “human grade” dog treats that are little sliced sausages and they smell delicious. Like actual edible salami. Haven’t tried them yet but I’m tempted to.
No, but I watched Penguinz0 taste pet food before for a tier list and some of it sounds to be pretty decent.
Interesting. I’ve watched quite a few of his videos, but never caught that one.
I feed my pet things that I eat, too! Collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, various squashes, fresh blueberries, etc.
Except for his bugs. I don’t like cockroaches or worms very much. But he seems to like them! So he gets those, too.
Milkbones taste like an unsalted pretzel. I was a bit stoned and teasing my dog.
i like to think my palate is slightly different to that of a dog
they evolved to basically survive on table scraps and other food humans didn’t want to eat so i’m not sure our concepts of “peak taste” will be the same
people sometimes have to stop their dogs eating their own vomit
I’ve just returned to Lemmy after a while so I’m OOTL. Can anyone give me a gist of what happened with the recent vegan drama on here? Or maybe link to a post I can read?
The company Wild Life claims to have created a nutritionally complete vegan cat food, even though it’s common knowledge that cats need meat proteins and nutrients in their regular diet.
https://lemmy.ca/post/27549478
I am no expert in the field, maybe they’re onto something, maybe not. 🤷♂️
Edit: Guess they dropped the link ☹️
Proteins are just amino acids. You can find the same proteins in plant foods as meat. There are other details about what different types of basic foods contain, of course, but it’s theoretically possible to create something that contains all the same nutrients as meat out of plants.
When I briefly skimmed over the original article, they made a point to mention their food contains taurine. You know, like one of the things they put in Monster Energy drinks…
I’m no animal nutrition expert, so I don’t know how that does or doesn’t help with kitty nutrition, but I’d just as soon feed my kitty actual chicken or tuna and call it a day.
Well, check it out: https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/taurine-in-cats
Taurine is an amino acid that’s an esssential nutrient for cats.
Nah, I’m not vegan so I probably wouldn’t like my cat’s food
Not really. I don’t Have a wish to try eating live insects.
Regarding pets that eat insects, at least you know they’re not some chemical processed garbage. No need to be curious what that tastes like, nor would I expect you to, you know it’s natural.
“natural” doesn’t mean “good”. Arsenic is natural. Oleander is natural. Hemlock is natural.
I think you understood exactly what I meant. It’s natural for certain pets to eat insects. I never mentioned anything about poisons.
I did understand what you said. “You don’t need to taste that, it’s natural, and natural things don’t contain chemicals”. Everything contains chemicals, and whether those chemicals are natural or artificial has no bearing on whether or not they’re harmful. You’re spreading hippie-dippy misinformation. Knock that shit off.
Well, guess what? He refuses the chemical infused dog treats, but he loves ham and hot dogs, and also Gravy Train Chicken Flavor, ground up version, not chunky.
I think we can both agree that’s nutrition, and also the dog is basically saying without words that the dog biscuit treats taste like absolute shit.
Our adopted dog definitely ain’t starving, we’re just tuning into what he does and doesn’t have more of an appetite for.
No “chemicals” in hot dogs, nosiree lmao
i worked at an animal hospital for a few years in my 20s (late 90s). I was also broke af punk kid living in a filthy punk rock house, barely able to afford my part of rent. So i’d bring home the pet food sometimes. It wasn’t really inventoried, and it’s nutrition. Do not recommend though, its a great way to get a bacterial gut infection since pet food regulations are very minimal.
it ranges. some cat food is indistinguishable from canned tuna. the science diet I/D canine prescription tastes exactly like canned corned beef hash. the cheap stuff (kibbles&bits, fancy feast, etc) tastes exactly like you’d expect: bone meal, corn starch, and ash slag. cause thats the filler trash the cheap stuff is made of.
generally though, most kibble just tastes like if you soaked grape nuts cereal in beef broth, and most wet food tastes about the same as canned horse. which is unpleasant.
some cat food is indistinguishable from canned tuna
This might be saying more about canned tuna than about cat food… (and I love canned tuna).
i’ve always assumed that whatever meat didnt pass qc for human canned tuna would just become cat food.
I’ve always assumed most of the “food” we get from the big liquid dumpster we call sea wouldn’t be sellable (to humans or other animals) if anything remotely resembling quality control applied to it… if anything, I’d assume the least worst bits go to the cats, since they’re much pickier eaters than us, and have less tolerance for toxins…
lol what a weird take. all the problems of overconsumption and ecosystem collapse aside, theres not much inherently worse about seafood than landfood.
cats arent more picky than us. they gladly eat all kinds of trash and raw dead meat. they’re picky about what we feed them. The respective tolerance for “toxins” between us and cats is, again, relative to the environment we put them in and the specific set of toxins.
Cats are obligate carnivores with an excellent sense of smell, evolved to eat freshly hunted meat and little else, who’ll have to be very hungry before they eat anything remotely past due date.
We’re omnivores who’ll eat pretty much anything including stuff that’d kill most other animals that’d try to eat it (seriously, look up the long lists of “normal” foods you can’t feed your pets because they’d kill them); we call deadly toxins that plants have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to be as inedible as possible “spices” and “drugs”, and consume them for fun. We’ll let perfectly good food rot and ferment for months before we eat it because it somehow makes it better for our tastes.
No, we’re most definitely not the picky eaters here, not even when compared to dogs, much less when compared to cats.
As for the ocean, everything in it comes with concentrations of mercury and other heavy elements and industrial waste that are harmful even to us, extremely high percentages of microplastics, and a vast variety of parasites that require anything we get from the ocean to be flash frozen before it can be considered safe to eat (if we ignore the heavy metals and plastics and other shit).
Plus, of course, every bit of crap ever produced on the planet ends up there… if homeopathy was real ocean water would be a fucking universal panacea, the amount of shit it’s got dissolved in it.
