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.
I tried a piece of kibble when I was a kid, mostly because it bothered my mom and I thought it was funny. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever eaten. Most of my dogs have eaten pretty much whatever you offer them, except (of course) my chihuahua. She’d eat buffalo sauce but not a carrot. When she lost all her teeth, she’d eat a flavor of wet food happily for like, a week, and then refuse to touch out ever again, so I don’t think it was the food being gross as much as it was her being a picky little shit.
Yep. I’ve tasted kibbles and baked treats / cookies. They’re generally not great, but the ones that taste ok are also my dogs favorites. Usually just like a sugar free human snack.
I feed my pets raw, so haven’t tried those. They seem to love it though.
Cool cool 👍
Someone donated some dog biscuit treats for our recently adopted dog Brownie, but he wouldn’t eat them. I tried a bite, but it didn’t taste anything like nutrition, it just seriously tasted like a chemistry lab… ☹️
He likes soft Chicken Gravy Train though.
it just seriously tasted like a chemistry lab…
Have you ever tried your pet’s food?Have you ever tried your son’s chemistry lab?
I was the son, and yes I tasted half the chemicals. Lucky I’m still alive.
I was tricked into eating dog biscuits when I was a little kid. Tasted like ash more than anything else. But dogs like vomit too, so our tastes are not very similar.
But maybe some vomit can be tasty?
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
That’s not true! That dog’s balls tasted average, at worst.
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…
I’ve licked some good balls before tbh
Thanks 👍
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.
Maybe these “chemicals” are the flavour the dog wants tho, I imagine it’s kinda like a really concentrated gravy?
I don’t imagine flavour has that much to do with nutrition, in fact it’s probably lacking in nutrition if it has no flavour.
Have you ever mixed hard kibble with soft food, only to watch your dog literally pick out all the hard kibble and only eat the soft food? And yes, before anyone asks, his teeth are fine.
The hard food (at least that particular brand) tastes fucking awful.
sugar is a “raw chemical” 🤓
Go eat a dog biscuit. Some of them taste worse than cardboard soaked in ammonia.
why did you eat cardboard soaked in ammonia
I didn’t outright eat that, but I had a chemistry set when I was a kid…
i don’t think dog vomit is particularly yummy and probably tastes pretty chemically but dogs tuck into that shit like it’s le cordon bleu
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.
I was going to ask WTF… but they like everything I feed them. (Cats) Hard food by an independent company that is no carb all protein. (Edit, young again pet food, my older cat had diabetes until I started this food, now he doesn’t!) Seafood Reveal cans, all pure fish. And not sure what’s in Friskies Temptations… but they want those like it’s crack.
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.
I tried peanut butter biscuits for dogs once. Needless to say, dogs are getting ripped off. Tastes nothing like peanut butter.
As a kid, think toddler, my parents said I used to eat the dry dog food with the dog. Not like a lot, but a bite sometimes. They said the dog would give me weird looks as I’d take a bite.
Yep, tasted pretty much every type of kibble and some snacks my dog gets. But it’s all plant based so I am not worried about meat getting bad or the like.
Some of the snacks are ok but I noticed that they always smell way more intensive than they taste. Kind of the opposite of human food.
Dog food and treats, cat food and treats, rabbit food, fish food, I’m sure others; i was curious, they were terrible.
wondered why your pet might not like particular foods?
No. It’s the same reason that you don’t like particular perfectly good foods. They’re attuned to different factors, but it’s the same process to appeal to them.
Back in the day, my mom fed their cat 9 Lives outdoor food. After a while she quit eating.
After I figured out the difference between outdoor and indoor food (basically extra preservatives), and got the same exact food, but the indoor variety, kitty chowed down!
Animals can taste the fucky chemicals as well.
Milkbones taste like an unsalted pretzel. I was a bit stoned and teasing my dog.
My brother ate a Snausage for the low low price of one US dollar. There was a whole negotiation process beforehand (Snausage, milk bone, kennel ration biscuit and dog chow were all on the table). He had regrets. I’ll admit that I drove a hard bargain, but he was old enough to know better.
For myself? No. Some of my cats’ shredded chicken in “gravy” looks and smells OK. Still no.
The veterinary sales rep I used to work with said, “their taste buds are very different from ours.” I’ll trust him
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 eaten cat biscuits. They don’t taste offensive, but there’s nothing in them for me to enjoy. Even so, they’re the one thing all my cats agree is worth eating.
My 13 years older sister gave me a chocolate piece when I was a kid, and asked afterwards if I liked it. I did. She gave me more, and didn’t tell me they were dog “chocolates”.
Tried one a few years ago - not as good as I remembered, and wouldn’t ask for another.
Dog chocolates are so waxy it’s crazy
Probably because it’s not chocolate. Chocolate is toxic to cats and dogs
Fair, but it still tastes like a candle.
