6 Days on a Dog Food Diet

June 8, 2015 1:46 PM

The last day of dog food week is a blur of kibble, canned and Freshpet. Monday morning, I weigh in. I’ve lost nearly 2 pounds. I get the results of a blood test back from my health clinic. My blood sugar level has dropped to the ultralow end of the ideal range — even better than when I was eating paleo.
posted by storybored (102 comments total)

Cormac McCarthy ate horse steak when he was a younger writer - I remember his story about it around the time The Road came out as a film.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:52 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I read through this article, and looked through the site, and I can't tell if it's a Clickhole ripoff, or meant to be taken seriously. Of course, that's the problem I have with a lot of websites these days.
posted by dortmunder at 1:52 PM on June 8, 2015 [23 favorites]

This is promising news, since the Republican plan for Social Security and Medicare seems to involve most seniors choosing between Fancy Feast for a week or Heart Medicine for the month.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:56 PM on June 8, 2015 [43 favorites]

So if the urban legends of poor old people subsisting on pet food were true we'd have a healthier aging population with fewer medical issues? (Yes, author covers that the cost of pet vs paleo is more expensive in her neck of the woods)
posted by tilde at 1:56 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Poe's Law, but for diets. No matter how disgusting or self-destructive a food regime is, someone somewhere on the Internet is eating it sincerely.
posted by RogerB at 1:57 PM on June 8, 2015 [23 favorites]

I've tried wet dog food, it tastes of bland stew.

Not inedible, but nothing exciting.
posted by Ferreous at 2:02 PM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

I know someone, God bless her, who will not serve her dogs anything unless she's tasted it herself first.
posted by infinitewindow at 2:04 PM on June 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

When I was pretty young (I'd guess still a single digit age), I went into the back room of the house to find my older brother kicking back, watching TV, munching on a snack. I mentioned to him we had bought a new brand of food for our golden retriever.

"I know", he mumbled as he chewed. "It's disgusting".
posted by The Gooch at 2:04 PM on June 8, 2015 [51 favorites]

I [go] to the local PetSmart, which is dog food heaven. There are four aisles of kibble and canned, not to mention an astonishing array of snacks — bacon chews, dried sweet potato slices, deer antlers. It’s all very tempting and a bit overwhelming. I explain my situation to a clerk, who steers me to store’s high-end house canned brand, Simply Nourish. There’s a chicken and beef stew, a tuna pasta casserole, even a chicken and carrot bisque with pumpkin and quail egg. I’m impressed.

...and it costs more than her paleo diet!
posted by storybored at 2:05 PM on June 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

I have eaten my dogs' food on a few occasions, but then, it's homemade and I know exactly what's in it (ground beef, vegetables, brown rice.) With some salt and spices, it makes an okay soup.
posted by Squeak Attack at 2:08 PM on June 8, 2015

John McPhee, in his book about Alaska bush pilots, wrote that part of the survival supplies some pilots carried was a bag of dry dog food. If you crashed in the bush the dog food would keep you alive until you were found. It was not good enough to tempt you into eating it other than in extreme need, however.
posted by Midnight Skulker at 2:09 PM on June 8, 2015 [54 favorites]

Cormac McCarthy ate horse steak when he was a younger writer

I ate horse steak often when I lived in Quebec, and it weren't no thing. Sold in grocery stores. People would occasionally flip out but when I asked them why horses and not cows, they couldn't really give me any solid reply.

I'm a vegetarian now, but if I reverted to omnivore I'd eat horse again. Lean, flavourful -- kind of the turkey to beef's chicken.
posted by Shepherd at 2:09 PM on June 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

if you really want to save money on dog food just start a string of fly-by-night dog walking businesses

you'll get access to all the dog food you need all you need to do is put up new signs every week

but that's a small price to pay for so much food

i mean an average black lab weighs like 60 pounds
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:11 PM on June 8, 2015 [42 favorites]

"Thanks to the closet stocked with Pet Bricquettes, Daniel and Mrs. Schiff were never reduced to direst need. Daniel, a passable though seldom inspired cook, concocted a kind of bread pudding from crumbled Bricquettes, Hyprotine powder, and an artificial sweetener, which Mrs. Schiff claimed actually to prefer to her usual fare." - Thomas Disch, On Wings of Song
posted by larrybob at 2:11 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

hands up if you got to the pumpkin and quail egg bisque and thought, well hey now
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:24 PM on June 8, 2015 [17 favorites]

this is like a recycled tom green sketch
posted by Existential Dread at 2:25 PM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

and I can't tell if it's a Clickhole ripoff, or meant to be taken seriously.

Everyone becomes their mask eventually.
posted by The Whelk at 2:25 PM on June 8, 2015 [17 favorites]

Also can we mention the really disgusting thing in this article


"why You Should Care"

No. Stop it.
posted by The Whelk at 2:28 PM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

Reading this I am haunted by a Mad Magazine page from the 1980s of a mock ad for a cook book – 101 weeknight dinners using dog food. The image was a somber, black-and-white rendering of a poor housewife kneading "bread." It was the first time in my youth I really thought about poverty, and American poverty in particular, which, as an Australian, remains an experience I find foreign and strange.
posted by onetime dormouse at 2:29 PM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

well, the dog seems pretty damn excited about it, maybe it's good
posted by thelonius at 2:30 PM on June 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

everything is bad and nothing is good
posted by Kitteh at 2:30 PM on June 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

Read up on what they're allowed to sell you as food for humans. Pink slime, mechanically separated poultry, beef washed with ammonia, and on and on and on. The people who got rich developing Factory Farming are writing the regulations, due to the Miracle Of American Democracy, and you can imagine where they set the bar for food quality.

Dog food, by and large, is made out of the stuff that they're still not allowed to feed to people.

It won't kill you in six days. But you could shred your junk mail and eat it with gluten-free soy sauce, and it wouldn't kill you in six days. You'd probably lose some weight, and it'd lower your blood sugar, too.

(This assumes the article is meant to be taken seriously, something we can't know since satire and reality have been indistinguishable since some date in the previous century. But your weight can easily vary by more than two pounds in the course of a day, so saying you lost two pounds in six days is meaningless, as anybody who thinks about this stuff enough to try eating dog food should certainly know...)
posted by Sing Or Swim at 2:35 PM on June 8, 2015 [20 favorites]

I guess she either ran out of people to tell that SHE EATS PALEO or everyone got tired of hearing it, so she had to write an article because god knows paleo dieters can't ever stfu about it.
posted by asockpuppet at 2:36 PM on June 8, 2015 [41 favorites]

Paleo is, like all fad diets, cobblers. Just stop eating shit, cut down on booze and get some exercise.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:38 PM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm okay with the entire article being a lead-up to "Don't forget to walk yourself."
posted by fiercecupcake at 2:38 PM on June 8, 2015 [30 favorites]

Anyone got an ETA on the end of civilisation cos I'm getting impatient.

"Don’t forget to walk yourself,” says Mom.

That made me laugh though.
posted by billiebee at 2:41 PM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

owe you a Coke, fiercecupcake...
posted by billiebee at 2:42 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've had dog crunchies, dog wet food, cat crunchies, and cat wet food. Of the four I would eat them in that order. Dog wet food smells great but is completely bland, and cat wet food smells awful and tastes awful and is too salty. I also put a fingerdip of fish flakes on my tongue once and they tasted like prawn cracker dust - not bad at all.
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:48 PM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

My blood sugar level has dropped to the ultralow end of the ideal range — even better than when I was eating paleo

Hypoglycemia is not a competition! There's a reason there is a normal range!
posted by Panjandrum at 2:56 PM on June 8, 2015 [40 favorites]

Yeah, I have a cat. Eating his slimy, malodorous food for a week would be a quantum leap beyond Milk Bones and kibble. I think I'll defer...
posted by jim in austin at 2:58 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I lost two pounds in a week! Then I went back to my normal diet, and gained five!
posted by jefflowrey at 3:04 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hypoglycemia is not a competition!

That's no way to maintain an eating disorder! Next thing you'll be telling me that orthorexia and obsessively min-maxing whatever number you're currently fixated on isn't actually as good for you as exercising, eating a balanced human diet, and seeking treatment for your anxiety!
posted by RogerB at 3:07 PM on June 8, 2015 [25 favorites]

I've eaten dog food (dry) on a dare/to prove it's no big deal more than once. Pretty bland; like Cheerios. Fish bait, on the other hand, is much more interesting. That should be the next article in the series.
posted by TedW at 3:15 PM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

When I was young, we had a schipperke that was on a special intestinal diet that was essentially super-bland, compressed ground lamb, rice and egg. It would slide out of the can like cranberry jelly on thanksgiving, ridges and all. And even though she was tiny, and only ate like a can and a half a week, my parents would buy it a case at a time, reasoning that it was part of our disaster preparedness planning and if it came down to it, we could all eat that dog food.

Of course, since I used to eat the dog treats anyway, this didn't really faze me. I was a weird kid.
posted by ApathyGirl at 3:19 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

See also the dog-food scam:

empty a can of dog food, fill it with chili, eat it on the sidewalk, the bourgeoisie are shocked into giving you money.
posted by idiopath at 3:20 PM on June 8, 2015 [32 favorites]

Mary Roach's Gulp has a fascinating section on dog food. What I found most interesting is that it has to be made to appeal to two customers: dogs and their owners. Obviously if the dog won't eat it, it won't sell. But owners have persnickety ideas about smell and variety which have to be catered to, even if the dog doesn't care.

E.g. I'm pretty sure the quail eggs were not demanded by a focus group of dogs.
posted by zompist at 3:35 PM on June 8, 2015 [15 favorites]

I've been feeding our cats Tiki Cat food lately. We put our previous kitties on it when looking for a good quality food for some aging cats with issues. They loved it like no other food I'd given them, and one of our two current ones is the same way - very insistent on getting some every morning.

They claim that it's certified for human consumption too, and at least some of the options look like human food. The shredded chicken looks and smells like if you replaced the label with a one for people, nobody would ever know. (I haven't tried it, being vegetarian) But I have heard that another food brand, Weruva, is similarly certified, and the reps for the company will sometimes open a can, put it on bread, and eat it to show the quality.

So now I wonder how it would go if someone tried a cat food diet instead of a dog food diet. Cats do seem pickier than dogs in what they'll eat, so might it be more palatable? And can someone do a cat food diet without adding some catnip into the mix?
posted by evilangela at 3:35 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I can't believe that no one has mentioned the Monkey Chow Diaries, in which a human primate eats nothing but monkey food for an entire week. Reminds me a lot of this, but the YouTube videos for the Monkey Chow Diaries are much funnier than this article. By day four he's losing his mind and it's absolutely hilarious.
posted by mister-o at 3:42 PM on June 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

I've seen a lot of bloggers name-dropping Canidae brand food recently. This feels like LiarTown USA's version of Pepsi Blue.
posted by sockermom at 3:43 PM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

This is exactly at the intersection between Paleo and Soylent madness. I think if she'd leaned a little more in the soylent direction (just eat 1800 calories of the fancy kibble plus a multivitamin), it wouldn't have broken her budget.
posted by katya.lysander at 3:43 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I once had a a summer job working at a pet food factory. Twice a day, a guy in a white lab coat would come down the stairs from the laboratory, and would proceed to sample the day's progress at the production line. With a spoon.
I assume he was always happy to go home for dinner.
Meanwhile, back in the warehouse, improperly sterilized cans would explode with regularity. I think I lasted all of one week.
posted by monospace at 3:46 PM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Meh, what's a little scurvy more or less?

This reminds me of the people who tell me rabbit starvation is a myth. Typical pedantry - you won't starve eating rabbit because food! blah blah.

Well, y'know, it's not that you're eating rabbit, it's that you're eating nothing but lean meat. Eat rabbit and pounds of apples, nuts and beans and fatty oils, yeah, you'll be fine.
But you can't live on just kibble anymore than you can just Ramen.
You can for a bit, sure, but dietary supplements and variety are everything.

Pioneers ate lard and biscuits made with lard and pies made with lard. Lard has fatty acids that are good for humans and it's calorie dense. But with the lard was soda and flour and dried fruit. Everyone knows Inuit ate whale meat, but they ate the roots, lichen and moss out of reindeer stomachs and kelp. And raw meat, particularly liver has plenty of vitamin c. Oh, and brains. Delicious braaains.
Dry dog food, not so raw.
Plenty of protein though. But too much protein and humans get bad diarrhea. Eat too much very lean protein exclusively and you die.
Dog food does have some fat, but it's mostly from domesticated animals and process. Wild animal fat is an entirely different, far more nutritious thing (it's downright delicious too).
But whatever the case, you need some form of fat - olive oil, nuts, sardines, whatever - to stay alive long term.

Cormac McCarthy ate horse steak when he was a younger writer

I heard Cormac McCarthy once talked to Werner Herzog - coherently!
(link)
posted by Smedleyman at 3:51 PM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

I thought McCarthy lived on motel vending machine crackers
posted by thelonius at 3:57 PM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Can I use this as an excuse to post my annoyance at unnecessary vegetables in my cat's wet food? My cat does not need carrots. Or potatoes. Or anything but meat. He is a carnivore, and we have to keep him on wet food because of his weight and teeth, and so many of the flavors of his preferred food include that stuff. He gets cat grass. He does not need any other greens, or starches, or breads. What's more, he eats around them if you put them in, so it just wastes everyone's time.

It's still marginally cheaper to do the cans than to buy him his own can of tuna fish, but not by much. He'd be fine with that and I wouldn't have to wonder what the hell "ocean fish" could mean except "shit that people wouldn't eat." I'd feel a bit better about buying him a roast chicken and shredding it. Maybe I should buy a meat grinder and just do it. I hate washing out and recycling those little cans.
posted by emjaybee at 4:02 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

This post is incomplete without Ann Hodgman's immortal contribution to the genre, "No Wonder They Call Me a Bitch".

Q. Was there any dog food that you just couldn't bring yourself to try?
A. Alas, it was a can of Mighty Dog called Prime Entree with Bone Marrow. The meat was dark, dark brown, and it was surrounded by gelatin that was almost black. I knew I would die if I tasted it, so I put it outside for the raccoons.

posted by Flannery Culp at 4:04 PM on June 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

"The bag opened. Mounds of dry pabulum sat insouciant under the light of dusk. Let's eat, he said. The eyes of his beast glowed, the red tongue sliding over salivated teeth. Come on, he said. The dog made a motion to come forward. They ate together."

A selection from Cormac McCarthy's Paleo Blog
posted by glaucon at 4:09 PM on June 8, 2015 [32 favorites]

i tasted all of my dog's fancy organic biscuits and they were all pretty tasty altho some of them gave me heartburn.
posted by poffin boffin at 4:14 PM on June 8, 2015

Even opening a can of wet cat food was enough to make me gag. I do sometimes fantasize about a food pill that would provide vitamins and minerals as well as satiating hunger, but I don't think kibble is the answer. There's a divide between human food and animal food that I just can't cross.
posted by bendy at 4:20 PM on June 8, 2015

I was just about to post a remembrance of No Wonder They Call Me a Bitch. It was hilarious, as were the letters to the editor it prompted.

She's married to David Owen, another funny writer.
posted by 4shortlegs at 4:31 PM on June 8, 2015

So now I wonder how it would go if someone tried a cat food diet instead of a dog food diet. Cats do seem pickier than dogs in what they'll eat, so might it be more palatable?

OTOH, dogs are omnivorous, whereas cats are obligate carnivores.
posted by acb at 5:01 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Good god why

OTOH, dogs are omnivorous, whereas cats are obligate carnivores.

Yeah, a lot of folks will put them on vegetarian dog food if they have allergies to animal protein or whatever and they do great. Or if they're vegan and don't want to support the meat industry etc. See this kettlebell with legs.

Even opening a can of wet cat food was enough to make me gag. I do sometimes fantasize about a food pill that would provide vitamins and minerals as well as satiating hunger, but I don't think kibble is the answer. There's a divide between human food and animal food that I just can't cross.

Well, soylent is a thing these days...
posted by Gymnopedist at 5:06 PM on June 8, 2015

My sister worked at a company outside of Toronto that had two plants: a chocolate candy factory and dog food plant.

Both were run basically the same way including the regular taste testing to identify any problems with each batch.

Apparently a number of employees rotated between plants and I can only assume one was a more enjoyable shift than the other.
posted by GuyZero at 5:10 PM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

Similar things have been tried
posted by Gymnopedist at 5:10 PM on June 8, 2015

I know I ate dog biscuits a few times when I was around 6 years old. I remember them as being very hard, but not bad tasting. I don't know what to make of the comment about horse steak. I've had horse tartare, and it was honestly one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 5:11 PM on June 8, 2015

A big reason that I feed my cats food that's rated for human consumption is that it's not disgusting to dish up for them. Sometimes, if I'm really hungry, I'll be serious when I tell them, as I always do, "Yum, this smells deeelicious!"
posted by janey47 at 5:14 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I saw a recipe for simple dog biscuits today that was basically just 2 cups flour of your choice to 2 small jars of baby food. Mix, knead, roll, cut, bake. I haven't made them yet so I don't know whether they're worth a damn, but I did think to myself, "hey, in a pinch or for entertainment value, I could eat those too."
posted by penduluum at 5:15 PM on June 8, 2015

Sorry about the horse steak comment; ironically, I hadn't eaten properly, and so forgot to edit my comment to say that the horse steaks were sold expressly for dogs. Basically, Cormac was living in the woods in a huge barn with his wife, and they were so hard up they had to eat this dog steak food or starve.

Although, as the article and several mefites here can attest, turns out dog food ain't so bad. Heck, horse can be a desirable dish, so maybe some of it is to do with cultural norms. The article, to me, read like an inditement of paleo that was so close to the knuckle as to be indistinguishable, but then a lot of meats are hard to tell apart.
posted by The River Ivel at 5:27 PM on June 8, 2015

Well it definitely beats monkey chow. Even monkey chow soaked in vodka overnight.
posted by ostranenie at 5:55 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Cheat day is sticking your head in the garbage.
posted by maryr at 6:10 PM on June 8, 2015 [17 favorites]

Even opening a can of wet cat food was enough to make me gag.

Ew, yes, that stuff smells FOUL! When Schiller was in his last months with us, I fed him wet food and kitten milk, and it was all I could do to not hork all over the place when the wet food had to be dished out. (He was 20 in this pic, he passed about 2 months after.)

Bailey, OTOH, absolutely refused to eat wet food. Even when he was old and ill, he wouldn't touch it, and if I tried to soften up his kibble, I caught holy hell for it.

Cats are weird. I miss mine a lot.
posted by MissySedai at 6:19 PM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

Dog food is unfit for human consumption because it's largely made in rendering plants, where "fish meal" means "51% fish, 49% whatever else we throw in there, including dead circus animals and euthanized pets." It's unfit for human consumption because no effort is made to prevent contamination from medications, PRIONS, other infectious agents, etc. This is why dog treats often advise you to wash your hands after dispensing. And, canned tuna is bad for cats because of the sodium and their kidneys / urinary tract.
posted by aydeejones at 6:20 PM on June 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

Note: if the actual dog treat gives you advice, seek help. But I started to noticing warnings on packaging like "wash your hands or you'll die of mad cow disease" lately. Or something like that
posted by aydeejones at 6:22 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

To clarify, about the circus animals and such, I'm talking about "traditional" dog food where the ingredient list includes "meals" or "by-products" -- if it says "fit for human consumption" then it's really just people food, IMO
posted by aydeejones at 6:24 PM on June 8, 2015

Well, if it's good enough for Mad Max, it should be good enough for anybody.
posted by happyroach at 6:33 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

If people can eat Canidae, does that mean dogs can eat Soylent?
posted by Rangi at 7:05 PM on June 8, 2015

I apparently tried dry dog food as a toddler. I ate a bit of cat dry food once in a drunken "I'll try anything" state. It was unremarkable.

My cat eats an astonishing variety of people food. He likes pretty much any kind of bread (paratha, tsoureki, challah, and bagel as well as regular bread), chips, rice crackers, rice and broccoli in addition to the unsurprising cheese, sour cream, yogurt, ice cream, milk, ham, corned beef and fish. He can be very picky about his dry food. He also doesn't seem to like the special cat foods that are made to look appealing to humans. He looooves raw kangaroo or beef. And the stinkier the tin of fish, the better.

Oddly, chicken, not so much. Won't have a bar of raw chicken and will only eat cooked chicken if hand-fed. In this he is clearly carrying on the torch of my dearly-departed First Cat, who had a similar attitude towards chicken. Mew and carry on and beg while it's being prepared and/or cooked, then turn your nose up at it when it's actually presented to you.

(Anyone worried about his diet, don't worry - he only gets little samples of people food, he doesn't eat it as a meal.)
posted by Athanassiel at 7:11 PM on June 8, 2015

Yeah, a lot of folks will put them on vegetarian dog food if they have allergies to animal protein or whatever and they do great. Or if they're vegan and don't want to support the meat industry etc. See this kettlebell with legs.

Ooby looks like a sweetheart, and I'll check out more of her videos, but damn, I bet that dog farts like a paper mill.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:12 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I used to snack on the occasional nugget of dry dog food when I was a tween. Not bad, slightly earthy taste. I was reminded of it strongly when I had my first bowl of Cracklin' Oat Bran.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:27 PM on June 8, 2015

This thread reminds me of the Washington Post's Animal Doctor, who is obsessed with reducing carbs, additives, and GMO ingredients in dog and cat food, regarding these as the source of all your pets' diseases. He's big on homemade pet food, which you could probably eat too, though it would be very bland (no salt, no garlic or onions which can be toxic to dogs).
posted by bad grammar at 7:36 PM on June 8, 2015

Hmmm. The original paleos in some parts of the world would eat their dogs if they had to.

This is getting complicated.
posted by clvrmnky at 8:40 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

My dog gets ridiculously excited when given a small taste of human food -- that is enough for me to know that dog food is bland and boring when eaten day after day.

I also can vividly recall the taste of cat food I tried as a child; I did not find that tasty and satisfying.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:47 PM on June 8, 2015

Our cats eat raw ground quail and pheasant. Every week I grab a defrosted chub, shake in a spoonful of taurine + vitamin supplement, then put on my purple nitrile gloves and mix the meat by hand. Meanwhile the cats wind around my ankles and stretch up to the counter, trying to knock things onto the floor in case they are edible. The ground meat has the texture of play-doh and I divide it into 1/2-pound chunks, individually bagged for feeding time.

Once or twice a month they each get a whole raw chicken neck, a baby rabbit, a small quail, or a white mouse. The younger growls the whole time as he eats what the vendor dispassionately calls 'whole prey food.' The older sometimes carries his to the top of the cat tree, leopard-like.

In spring the raw food vendor may send chicks, pale yellow fluffballs with their spindly legs frozen together in vacuum-sealed plastic. Too many can cause constipation, she warns.

I am a vegetarian. I handle them as carefully as I can, remind myself of the food chain, the medical issues that make raw food the only choice for one of the cats, that these small meals were humanely euthanized and this is part of life. The kitten jumps into the air, batting at the plastic bag in an attempt to knock his prey to the floor.
posted by subbes at 8:58 PM on June 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

So yeah, I'd probably eat what our cats eat. If I could cook it first.
posted by subbes at 9:00 PM on June 8, 2015

E.g. I'm pretty sure the quail eggs were not demanded by a focus group of dogs.

You haven't my dog. He hates focus groups.
posted by ryoshu at 9:05 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Countess Elena: Ooby looks like a sweetheart, and I'll check out more of her videos, but damn, I bet that dog farts like a paper mill.


I think that comes standard with the English Bulldog Experience. Friend on Facebook found one that lived in the neighborhood a few weeks back and had to bring him back home and described him:

"Spending an hour with a delightfully wiggly, snorty, farty, sneezy, slobbery, friendly, good-natured geriatric bulldog (who turned out to live about a quarter mile away) who even let me know when she needed to get out to potty has taught me that I don't ever want an English bulldog. I mean, I thought Winston was the snortiest, fartiest, heaviest dog I'd met. Princess Sophia weighs as much as a fire hydrant and is about as helpful getting into the SUV...."
posted by Gymnopedist at 9:10 PM on June 8, 2015

correction: her* -- Princess Sophia is a girl!
posted by Gymnopedist at 9:16 PM on June 8, 2015

Paleo is, like all fad diets, cobblers. Just stop eating shit, cut down on booze and get some exercise.

I know a couple of people who take Paleo pretty seriously. I think it's just a diet for the engineering mindset. These guys get really excited about biochemistry - the chemical reactions and cascades that occur when two different fatty acids interact.

It's pretty cool, but Paleo is sort of one of those obsessions that develop in middle age, like racing RC boats or participating in Civil War reenactments.
posted by Nevin at 9:42 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

My cats are extremely interested in what I am eating at all times and despite telling them that they are obligate carnivores who absolutely shouldn't have Sesame Chicken or Bean Burritos they still persist in trying to eat them and sometimes get ahold of them, as when they ascend my arm and bury their faces in my sesame chicken while I flail and go "Ugh no you are obligate carnivores and can't eat this."
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 9:48 PM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's still marginally cheaper to do the cans than to buy him his own can of tuna fish, but not by much. He'd be fine with that and I wouldn't have to wonder what the hell "ocean fish" could mean except "shit that people wouldn't eat." I'd feel a bit better about buying him a roast chicken and shredding it. Maybe I should buy a meat grinder and just do it. I hate washing out and recycling those little cans.

If you do go for either of those options as the major source of food for your cat, make sure you (a) add taurine and (b) only give raw chicken, or if it is roasted, make absolutely sure there are no bones left.

Our cat gets a can of tuna or salmon on Christmas and her birthday, and she's pretty happy about it. Raw chicken wings or necks a few times a week, and she growls at them, drags them around the house, and shakes them until they are dead, but doesn't always bother to eat them afterwards.

Lately she has forgotten she is a carnivore and is WAY too interested in toast, porridge, and cereal. Like, to the point that she tries to steal them off our plates/out of our bowls. I cannot imagine what the attraction is. Cats are weird.
posted by lollusc at 10:11 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

(I let her keep the toast she sank her fangs into a couple of days ago, just to see what would happen. It was completely dry toast without any topping, and she crunched happily through the entire piece, swallowing it all. IS NOT NORMAL.)
posted by lollusc at 10:12 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: you haven't my dog.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:16 PM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

whereas cats are obligate carnivores

I have tried to explain this to my associate cat, but she still prefers to spend each afternoon in the back yard, watching birds and bugs and occasionally snacking on some grass. "Sitting in the salad," I think of it as.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:34 PM on June 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

Gaines Burgers, anyone? I tried one of these as a preteen and gacked my noggin off for 45 minutes. I'd love to find an equivalent Gaines Burger For People that won't leave me clutching my abdomen, because I'm busy and poor.
posted by biddeford at 10:55 PM on June 8, 2015

We feed our dog raw meat with a bit of veggies mixed in. We buy it at a store here that sells raw dog food. It's a thing here (in Germany). They call it 'BARF' - I'm the only one who finds this funny.
posted by From Bklyn at 11:11 PM on June 8, 2015

I've had horse tartare, and it was honestly one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten.

I absolutely agree. Amazing taste.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:28 PM on June 8, 2015

I confess that while I never ate cat or dog food, as a kid, the "Chocolate" (actually carob) drops meant for our dog disappeared amazingly fast. It didn't help that they came in a tube like the actual chocolate drops.
posted by happyroach at 11:37 PM on June 8, 2015

Friend of mine had a little old lady cat (it was like 20, all it did was purr and eat) who was indulged in old age with a diet of raw salmon, tuna, chicken, ground beef, and buttered toast and taurine -infused hard treats. Very good cat, very content.
posted by The Whelk at 12:10 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

It also liked fresh mango if I recall which was a problem if you had a mango cocktail nearby
posted by The Whelk at 12:11 AM on June 9, 2015

A brand of dog food we used to buy the now sadly departed hound had pasta shapes in it.

I was frankly suspicious of the inclusion of pasta to begin with but, what really got me, was that different flavours had different shapes. As if the damn dog, a creature which I once watched eat an entire raw beef knuckle, bones and all, before horking it up into a flower bed and then reconsuming the resulting slurry of half digested cow and soil, was thinking "Farfalle, with rabbit?"
posted by Dext at 1:35 AM on June 9, 2015 [8 favorites]

This reminds me of the Monkey Chow Diaries. It's a sad, authentic, hilarious descent into madness.
posted by matrixclown at 8:38 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm not surprised that dog food doesn't taste of much. Given that the dog will consume the entire bowlful, lick the bowl clean, lick the floor around the bowl, lick the bowl again, and come and ask for more in slightly under three seconds, there's really no point in making it taste of anything.
posted by Hogshead at 9:04 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I feel like if "paleo" is paleolithic, i.e. what humans would have eaten in that time period, then a diet where you only eat dog food is like, "post-apocalyptic" or something.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 9:07 AM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

You know what Beggin Strips smell like? Delicious bacon.

You know what Beggin Strips taste like? A small dead rodent.

Just trust me on this.
posted by Splunge at 9:32 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

snausages gave my iron-stomached ex-feral trash eating dog the most epic heinous farts and the most runny demonic poos so i can't even begin to imagine what it would have done to my puny frail human stomach. death prolly.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:04 AM on June 9, 2015

You know what Beggin Strips taste like? A small dead rodent.

Based on what dogs seem to like to eat I'm closing this bug as Working As Intended.
posted by GuyZero at 10:27 AM on June 9, 2015 [7 favorites]

Obviously if the dog won't eat it, it won't sell. But owners have persnickety ideas about smell and variety which have to be catered to, even if the dog doesn't care.

"How would you describe your dog's temperament?"
"She's picky, and she's nervous sometimes, - But she's very smart."
"And yours?"
"He's independent, you know? He knows what he likes. He's pretty hard to fool."

"Oh my god, they're describing themselves."
"This your first group? "
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 10:42 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Paleo is, like all fad diets, cobblers

Sign me up for the all cobbler diet, please and thank you.
posted by maryr at 11:17 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

You know what Beggin Strips smell like? Delicious bacon. the smoky puke of a thousand maniacs.
posted by fifthrider at 11:25 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

The conversation with my vet that went:

"What's this brown goop all over their faces? Have they been sick?!"
"...oh that's probably the sesame chicken."
"You fed your cats Chinese food?"
"I didn't so much 'feed' it to them as they climbed my arm and buried their faces in it."
"Ah."

Was fun.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 4:15 PM on June 9, 2015

I think we have the concept for the next book by AJ Jacobs.
posted by yellowcandy at 8:52 PM on June 9, 2015

He's too thin already
posted by The Whelk at 10:22 PM on June 9, 2015

Marks & Spencer has a (human) pet food taster (apologies for the Daily Mail link).
posted by klausness at 3:50 AM on June 21, 2015