Why is there no mouse flavoured cat food?

March 10, 2020 6:16 PM

A twitter thread where a cat food scientist asks all your burning cat food questions.

Why is there no pork cat food? What are the rules for describing the protein?

Spoiler: the most popular flavour is tuna. And:

But, as an aside, the macronutrient profile (the ratio of fat to protein to carbohydrate) that cats prefer is remarkably similar to what you would get if you mushed up a mouse. That’s the beauty of evolution.

posted by jeather (69 comments total)

Have you ever tried to raise and then humanely kill and clean literal tons of mice? Too small even if they were safe for human consumption. About 25 years ago I spent most of a year working with an ex-airforce documentation specialist contractor compiling the Standard Operating Practices for a major animal food manufacturer. They're remarkably serious about monkey chow, lion kibbles, cat/dog food. Sadly no kitties at the corporate HQ.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:45 PM on March 10, 2020 [13 favorites]

Years and years ago a print magazine published a witty article on the development and marketing of cat food. I wish the hell I could remember the magazine and/or the title, but the only thing that sticks in my mind is the comment of the author, when told that mice are the ideal food for cats, nutritionally: "well then it's simple: get some mice, grind the suckers up, and stick 'em in a can".

Alas, the pet food researcher explained, there's a problem. Mice taste terrible. Given the option of mice and almost any other foodstuff, cats will opt for the latter. Hence the massive, stupidly expensive and obsessive search for something Cats Will Eat.
posted by jrochest at 6:48 PM on March 10, 2020 [11 favorites]

And it's a delightful twitter thread: I'm in there, somewhere.
posted by jrochest at 6:49 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Oh it's easy to find things Cats Will Eat. Put something you want to eat on a plate and start eating it and tell them no and they will nose right in. Things that Cats Will Eat That Are Nutritionally Appropriate is a different task. (That said my stupidest cat recently ate a mouse that I still don't know where it found it, just for joy, so perhaps even mice are tasty to some cats.)

Have you ever tried to raise and then humanely kill and clean literal tons of mice?

I have absolutely not!
posted by jeather at 6:54 PM on March 10, 2020 [21 favorites]

It's worth noting that this particular cat food scientist works in the UK, and some of the claims that he makes are true in the UK but not necessarily elsewhere; it is not true in the US that pet food protein must be human-grade, and while he claims that "The idea that any old crap goes into pet food is simply [not] true," I fear this is much less true in the US than it should be. Most US supermarket cat food has a fair amount of meat by-products, which can be

the non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue, & stomachs & intestines freed of their contents.

I mean, it's probably fine for your cat to eat kidneys, livers, and intestines - if you buy Friskies I'd be more concerned about the fact that it's much more high-carb than a smushed-up mouse, with wheat gluten and soy flour added as fillers. But human-grade it is not.
posted by Jeanne at 7:04 PM on March 10, 2020 [15 favorites]

Hence the massive, stupidly expensive and obsessive search for something Cats Will Eat.

This soft bastard will apparently eat cold ground beef still fully wrapped in plastic on a styrofoam tray, as his teeth marks and my outrage in the kitchen proved earlier this afternoon. Oh, and his favorite food is ketchup.
posted by Mizu at 7:08 PM on March 10, 2020 [43 favorites]

the non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue, & stomachs & intestines freed of their contents.

...human-grade it is not.

Not gonna argue with that wisdom, but it sounds exactly like what my dad said his parents ate on the Lower East Side of New York during the Depression. He shared this appetizing information with us kids when we complained about the "gross" food we had to eat. So the next time I feed my cat I'll welcome him to Hooverville Restaurant and tell him the lungs are especially recommended tonight.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 7:46 PM on March 10, 2020 [9 favorites]

The strategy I described in this question has indeed worked: With the addition of midday dry food, my cats are now somewhat less anxious about food and somewhat less likely to immediately drag away and eat any food that might be out, such as an entire wrapped hamburger or a whole pizza slice. Often the cats don't even come investigate what we're eating anymore. That said, they are still pizza cats and will almost certainly always try, given enough time. One nice recent discovery: Cats can eat black olives! They're one of the few vegetables they've tried so far that they've actually liked.

Also? Since cats, I see almost no bugs around the house, and no mice anymore. They are almost certainly eating the bugs, and at least scaring off the mice, and it's glorious.
posted by limeonaire at 7:47 PM on March 10, 2020 [6 favorites]

My eldest, long departed cat grew up on the mean streets of a foreign city before engineering a move into my apartment. Like most rescue cats, she was initially grateful for just about any kind of food put in front of her. But her absolute favourite food was bread. To be clear, I never offered her bread. I would just come home from time to time, to discover a half-gnawed loaf I'd carelessly left on a counter now on the floor of a crumb-covered kitchen, and, in my bedroom, a very dozy cat sleeping off her carb overload on my bed.
posted by senor biggles at 7:48 PM on March 10, 2020 [16 favorites]

Mice taste terrible. Given the option of mice and almost any other foodstuff, cats will opt for the latter.

Hmm, my cat who is incredibly picky about her food, delights in eating mice whole. I had a mouse invasion a couple of months ago, and she'd sometimes run past me several times an hour with one in her mouth and then I'd hear her crunching them down. And she's free fed so she always had food available, usually both wet and dry.
posted by tavella at 7:48 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

jrochest, I believe that article was in Discover magazine and it was all about how cat food was the most perfect food engineered on the planet. I remember the article had a pull quote about bush pilots keeping a bag or two in the plane, as nothing else had as much nutrition for the weight. (This was a long time before REI, if memory serves)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:52 PM on March 10, 2020 [4 favorites]

But her absolute favourite food was bread.

Somewhere there's a delightful tumblr thread with pictures of cats stealing bread. Science Tumblr spoke up to say it's something about the yeast that interests them.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:54 PM on March 10, 2020 [3 favorites]

The dirty secret of Big Cat Food is that all cat food is actually the same secret flavor...Owner.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:55 PM on March 10, 2020 [14 favorites]

My vet BIL says that cats have early imprinting to kibble *shape*. That's why all the dry food is shaped differently by supplier: market capture. Shrug, could be true I guess. Makes sense.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:57 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I regret to inform you that due to ongoing Elderly Cat Issues I recently learned that you can totally buy bulk ground mouse.

Fortunately I have not done so. Also a lot of the reviews are like "mouse! the perfect food for cat! however my cat refused to eat it. five stars!"
posted by little cow make small moo at 8:06 PM on March 10, 2020 [27 favorites]

My cats have always eaten cat food. So far, so good. Some of them have eaten mice whole, one of them stalked pigeons from the garage roof and took them down mid-flight, but my current cat will just play with mice and leave them unharmed. Carnivores' tastes vary. Pets' more so.
posted by kozad at 8:15 PM on March 10, 2020

A question I had, but didn't see answered: do they have kennels (the cat equivalent of kennels?) of tester cats? If so, then may I see them?
posted by codacorolla at 8:22 PM on March 10, 2020

Codacorolla, of course!

And no, they're research cats, often breed for the purpose :(
posted by esoteric things at 8:29 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

A question I had, but didn't see answered: do they have kennels (the cat equivalent of kennels?) of tester cats? If so, then may I see them?

They have pets onsite both at Waltham in the UK where the researcher in question works as well at the Mars Petcare Global Innovation Centre in Tennessee.
posted by thecjm at 8:29 PM on March 10, 2020

But her absolute favourite food was bread.

Somewhere there's a delightful tumblr thread with pictures of cats stealing bread. Science Tumblr spoke up to say it's something about the yeast that interests them.

I knew that cats tend to like pumpkin so much because of an abundance of the amino acid Citrulline, so I wondered in light of this comment whether yeast also produce Citrulline, and it turns out they do.
posted by jamjam at 8:31 PM on March 10, 2020 [14 favorites]

(I forgot to add that while they have pets on site, unless you've got business there you won't be able to see them. Trade secrets and all).
posted by thecjm at 8:31 PM on March 10, 2020

My cat loves bread, but I just assumed it was because I do too, but only eat a little, as a treat. Carbs are the best for humans AND cats, but we shouldn't eat too many.

I don't know if my cat has eaten any mice. My neighbor had one and I wanted to lend him out, but he's already claimed the basement and stairwell of my building and I hesitate to let him think he owns her apartment, too.

I've seen him torture and eat bugs but the most memorable was him bringing a giant, LIVE roach from the basement and LETTING IT GO IN MY APARTMENT. I tracked it down and the little jerk watched me smoosh it, then sauntered off. An hour later he came back to where he saw the carcass and spent 10 minutes looking around, looking at me and whining, and looking around for it again. As if I left it there for him to eat at his leisure. I assume he tortures the roaches in the basement now so he doesn't lose them, he hasn't done that again.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 8:53 PM on March 10, 2020 [5 favorites]

This twitter thread is delightful and if you keep expanding the hidden replies and scrolling down the thread, you see he's being quite interactive with people all along the timeline. He's being very generous with twitter people and they are treating him with a lot of respect. It's an example of Good Twitter and I'm happy for that.

Fascinating read as far as I got (which was pretty far). Thanks so much for posting!

(My girl cat refuses to eat seafood flavors, and my boy cat will sample the canned food but mostly likes the dry.)
posted by hippybear at 8:59 PM on March 10, 2020 [4 favorites]

Have you ever tried to raise and then humanely kill and clean literal tons of mice? Too small even if they were safe for human consumption.

It was deep into some food science talk and I think I was half-hungover but I remember some speaker saying the smallest mammals worth it for farming/raising for food was rabbits and guinea pigs and guinea pigs where really on the edge.

Anyway Cat the Cat killed and brought home so many mice, shrews, and voles but never ate them. She only ate dry food, fish flavored cat tins, chicken nuggets and mango sorbet.

The only time she brought home a rabbit it was a baby she mistook for a kitten.
posted by The Whelk at 9:03 PM on March 10, 2020 [5 favorites]

*imagines a rabbit raised by a cat to think it was a cat*

Okay, I'm going to need a good illustrator for my upcoming charming children's book!
posted by hippybear at 9:06 PM on March 10, 2020 [18 favorites]

lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood

Americans have strange notions about offal, but most, if not all, of the above would count as being potentially fit for human consumption in the UK and many other places. I’ve never knowingly eaten a spleen, but I have eaten the rest of them, though sometimes only as ingredients. What with BSE, brains may possibly be questionable these days, but they are tasty enough.

bone, partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue, & stomachs & intestines freed of their contents

Sound less palatable, especially the “partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue”, but then again tripe is cow stomach, and I think we have discussed pork bung sometimes masquerading as calamari in cheap restaurants on the Blue in the past.

American food standards are generally lower than in Europe, hence the whole fuss during the Brexit debates about chlorinated chicken etc., and the standards may well be even worse for pet food so your basic point may still hold. But I don’t think the claim that UK pet food is made with human grade ingredients necessarily means that it won’t contain many of the things on that list.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 9:16 PM on March 10, 2020 [8 favorites]

That thread turned into a delightful AMA about cat tastes!
posted by matildaben at 9:18 PM on March 10, 2020

Cat tastes...?

Mostly like chicken

I'm here all week, try the Siamese...
posted by Windopaene at 9:25 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

The tiny cat loves cucumber for some reason. As in will actively seek it out.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:51 PM on March 10, 2020 [3 favorites]

Anyway Cat the Cat killed and brought home so many mice, shrews, and voles but never ate them.

We've only ever put our cats out on a leash attached to a lead across our backyard. Nevertheless, our girl cat once presented a dead bird at the doorstep much to the horror/amusement of my husbear. She's literally bounded in her movements, but she still got one!

It's only ever been the one, though.
posted by hippybear at 10:31 PM on March 10, 2020

iirc Jonathan gold was served spleen at an Uzbek place in la and reported that it tasted like liver.
posted by brujita at 10:50 PM on March 10, 2020

Growing up, one of our family cats would eat broccoli. A couple others would eat cooked chicken.

Now, our two cats have very different acceptable food choices. The younger one wants wet food, and seems to prefer the kal-kan that is a mix of tuna and snapper. She’ll eat dry food, but only when it’s clear that we aren’t giving her another packet of wet. The older one, she’ll eat the wet food, but not a lot. She prefers dry, but more than that, she prefers (and demands) flaked dried fish (the stuff you see on top of Japanese food that wavers in the heat coming off of the food), and will happily eat that and nothing else. Neither will eat chicken, and when I accident got chicken flavored dry food, they were aggressive in their disappointment in me.

The older one will eat little amounts of raw fish, like shirashi (the little tiny white fish that are usually a topping on stuff), or minced tuna, but will quickly lose interest, while the younger one just looks at it like “what’s this shit, where’s my packet food?”
posted by Ghidorah at 12:36 AM on March 11, 2020

I feed my cats chicken because I figure given the chance they could probably take down a live chicken. They could fish from a small pond with dopey fish so that's ok too. I wouldn't feed them pork (even if an option) because pigs can eat humans, there's no way my kitties could take them down. I don't think they've ever eaten a mouse, though one gleefully crunched all the legs of a huntsman spider and I can't quite look at her the same way anymore.

The weirdest cat food I've seen is venison. How would a cat ever eat venison without a human slave to hunt and kill it (and then cut it up too, they are lazy cats).


That was a delightful threat. Also: mouse tacos!
posted by kitten magic at 1:06 AM on March 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

None of these questions are about burning cat food. Does it burn or not?
posted by sexyrobot at 1:10 AM on March 11, 2020

Oh, how I wish I had a picky eater that I could bribe with tasty morsels. I would demand affection, cosiness, amusing tricks. But what can you do with a cat who only eats one variety of dry cat food? I've tried tempting it with cat "treats", but to no avail. It's quite annoying.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:16 AM on March 11, 2020

Joe in Australia, there's not much bribery involved. Basically it just gives them something REALLY worth their time yelling at you for. Treats (can't say that word aloud) are for manipulating me, not me the cats.
posted by kitten magic at 1:23 AM on March 11, 2020

Raising the meat required to keep our many charming obligate carnivores is not so great for the environment (dogs and cats eat the meat equivalent of 62 million Americans each year). So it is interesting to see people considering the idea of using artificially cultured meat instead. Moggies of the brave future will chow down on delicious, juicy artificial mice: with maybe just a few lightly crunchy bones, a hint of catnip. Maybe feathers instead of fur for a little variety.
posted by rongorongo at 2:56 AM on March 11, 2020 [4 favorites]

The question I did not see answered... do he and his team actually taste the cat food, ever? He makes the point that it is fine for human consumption, I'm wondering if in the course of developing a new flavor, they are like "hmmm, I think it needs a touch more liver" or some such.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 4:20 AM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

I came in to mention that the mystery magazine with the “canned ground mice” suggestion was indeed Discover, which I am certain of because I had a subscription as a child, and distinctly remember the article including the suggestion to just grind the little suckers up whole.

As I recall, the conclusion the article reached was “You have to convince cats to eat it, but before that, you have to convince humans to buy it.”
posted by notoriety public at 4:27 AM on March 11, 2020

On the checkout counter at my pharmacist (who does a lot of compounding for the St. Louis Zoo), for customers' reading pleasure while we wait, is a long list of the recommended foodstuffs/flavors recommended to hide medicine for various species. Most of the big cats have different preferences.
posted by notsnot at 5:16 AM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

I have one cat who is very picky and two cats who are not, so I am down to one kibble that picky underweight elderly princess will reliably eat. They will reliably eat some wet food, but not much at a time -- putting out two small cans for three cats will take about 16 hours to be eaten. That said they will all eat approximately infinity treats at any one time. The cats are not too excited when I make yeast bread but the fattest cat is completely obsessed with pizza crusts and will wander away to lick and cuddle them.

lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood

I am not what one might call an especially adventurous eater but I have tried a few of these things (and know people who eat more of them regularly; I am not the biggest fan of them) and see them for sale in butcher shops all the time. I have no issues with any of these things being in cat food.

On the checkout counter at my pharmacist (who does a lot of compounding for the St. Louis Zoo), for customers' reading pleasure while we wait, is a long list of the recommended foodstuffs/flavors recommended to hide medicine for various species. Most of the big cats have different preferences.

Please please please share a picture of this.
posted by jeather at 5:52 AM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Back when we had a cat, the surefire food, guaranteed to make him come out of hiding, was cheap, old american cheese slices. Just the crinkly sound of unwrapping the plastic from a slice was sure to bring him running and meowing.

Tuna water was a close second. That's the water in a can of people tuna. Not the tuna itself. Just the water it's packed in.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:07 AM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Man, I wish I had y'all's problem with picky cats. This morning I woke up to find that my little orange cat had gnawed and consumed a significant portion of my bedsheets.
posted by sciatrix at 6:13 AM on March 11, 2020 [6 favorites]

so, I'm guessing your bedsheets have been soaked in something disturbingly biological?
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 6:18 AM on March 11, 2020

I've heard that mice taste good, but moles don't, and voles taste worse. We have all three on the property, and it looks to me like our cat only eats the mice and just tortures the other two.
posted by MtDewd at 6:26 AM on March 11, 2020

This morning I woke up to find that my little orange cat had gnawed and consumed a significant portion of my bedsheets.

I told you making bedsheets out of jerky was a bad idea.
posted by jeather at 6:35 AM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

If you mean cat spit, then yes.
posted by sciatrix at 6:35 AM on March 11, 2020

One of our two cats is extremely picky about her food. Only moist, and she detests the salmon-flavored stuff. I've offered chicken, turkey giblets, etc. No dice.

The other cat will eat literally anything. French fry? Green bean? Cheerio? Random bit of rabbit poop? De-lish!

In conclusion, cats are weird. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
posted by jquinby at 6:40 AM on March 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

Back when we had a cat, the surefire food, guaranteed to make him come out of hiding, was cheap, old american cheese slices. Just the crinkly sound of unwrapping the plastic from a slice was sure to bring him running and meowing.


For our beloved calico, it was whipped cream. She knew the sound of the stuff squirting out of the pressurized can into a cup of cocoa and was johnny-on-the-spot. We'd squirt out a little pile for her on the kitchen floor and let her have at it. I miss her every time I have cocoa now.
posted by dlugoczaj at 6:57 AM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

dogs and cats eat the meat equivalent of 62 million Americans each year

That's a... strange... unit of measurement, but given the number of comments in the "cats are just waiting for you to die so they can eat your delicious corpse" thread, I guess it's germane.

I'll let you insert your own Soylent Green joke here.
posted by Mayor West at 7:25 AM on March 11, 2020 [13 favorites]

They should make cat food that tastes like dog food, if my cats are anything to go by. (Picky eater dog who doesn't eat all her food + constantly ravenous cats = lots of stolen dog kibble)
posted by misskaz at 7:28 AM on March 11, 2020

We figured that our cat's dietary habits were going to have to shift radically after he had most of his teeth pulled a couple years back (diabetic ulcers... poor kitty :-( ), but he's so committed to his favorites that he's learned to work around his inability to bite or chew. Dry kibble just gets swallowed whole, so we have to be careful to buy it small enough that he doesn't choke on it. I'm not sure tuna fish ever actually makes contact with his tongue, as he can put down a 5-oz can of the stuff in 10 seconds flat. My favorite, though, it watching him go after a ham when he thinks we're not looking. You would think that an 11-pound cat with one snaggly tooth would be deterred from trying to eat something as tough as pig skin; you would quickly change your tune after watching the dance of a carnivore worrying the meat off a bone with his gums, and then gulping it down without bothering to chew it.
posted by Mayor West at 7:31 AM on March 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

burning cat food questions

I have seen our cat eat hot wings.
posted by pracowity at 7:51 AM on March 11, 2020

Don't most cats swallow kibble whole? My fully teethed cats' puke suggests they do.
posted by jeather at 8:21 AM on March 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

dogs and cats eat the meat equivalent of 62 million Americans each year

What's that in Europeans?
posted by acb at 8:56 AM on March 11, 2020 [4 favorites]

Our dearly departed tabby would cut you for a stale Ritz cracker.
posted by telophase at 9:21 AM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

What's that in Europeans?

The average weight of a European is 70.8kg compared with 80.7kg for Americans, so the conversion rate is approximately 1.14 or 70.6 million Europeans.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 10:34 AM on March 11, 2020 [10 favorites]

My little rescue is a delightful mix of food insecurity that she still hasn't gotten over after nearly three years with me (likewise with abandonment issues) and consequent non-pickiness, combined with a sensitive stomach. I found the hard way that a particular kind of chicken-flavored dental treat made her throw up more often than her baseline, which is at least once every three weeks anyway. But she's also very polite, for a kitty as food-motivated as she is. When it comes to human food, she'll come sniff anything on my plate, but she won't insist if I don't offer. She's really very polite in that regard; at most she'll sit a little away and lick her lips and wait---except for sushi. If I'm having takeout sushi, the little nose will insinuate itself onto the tray and will not back off. (But she still won't try to steal. She's very sweet.) So by ancient pact, every time I get takeout sushi now I also get a separate box of salmon sashimi for her, with nothing else in the box (no lemon slices or wasabi). She gets about a quarter of a single slice, because I've got to watch her weight.

She likes broccoli, but only a little; loves cat grass; and last summer I discovered that she adores strawberries. I'll hold a strawberry cut in half out for her and she'll eat it down by rasping it with her tongue. I don't know what it is she likes so much about it, but I'm not complaining, since it's not harmful for her (I checked) and makes her happy.

She hasn't tried to steal unattended human food, but that's mostly because I don't leave any out. Once I saw her trying to get into the unopened produce delivery box. I think she wanted to get at the broccoli.
posted by seyirci at 10:35 AM on March 11, 2020 [4 favorites]

My male cat will climb into to the shopping bag to find the cheese, chew it open and then lick a big groove out of it. He also likes to lick the bowl after I make noodle soup even though there's chilli in it.

The female one will attempt to climb me like a tree and grab my plate in order to steal any of the following: cheese, buttered toast, pastries, ice lollies. Especially ice lollies which she is obsessed with. The other day she straight up stole a mini cheddar out of my hand.
posted by stillnocturnal at 11:00 AM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

The tiny cat loves cucumber for some reason.
Interesting. Whenever I've Googled 'cat + cucumber', I see a different result.
posted by MtDewd at 11:48 AM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

I didn't know I needed a thread full of thieving cat stories but it is wonderful
posted by brilliantine at 11:55 AM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Regarding eating mice:

I had a microbiology prof who'd done some work for NASA about how people would survive/eat on a Mars mission. He said other people on the project were trying to find an ideal protein for long-term space travel.

Astronauts said they needed real, fresh meat and wanted help finding something they could raise sustainably in space. So the scientists were evaluating the options. You can't really have a grazing cow in space and then turn it into steak when you get hungry. So think smaller.

Can you raise chickens in space? Chickens grow to full size quite quickly relative to other meat sources, so that's a big plus. But it'd still be impractical. Maybe ... smaller yet?

Yeah. Mice. Mice reproduce super quickly, are easy to raise in a small space, probably would do fine in low gravity, and could be a reliable source of fresh protein. The scientists decided this was actually a pretty perfect solution.

The astronauts said they didn't need fresh meat after all.

(Sorry to dash the hopes of any aspiring space cats.)
posted by katieinshoes at 1:20 PM on March 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

Yeah. Mice. Mice reproduce super quickly, are easy to raise in a small space, probably would do fine in low gravity, and could be a reliable source of fresh protein. The scientists decided this was actually a pretty perfect solution.

Did they dismiss guinea pigs, which have actually been cultivated for food?
posted by acb at 5:55 PM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

I was wondering that myself. If you are going to go for a rodent, why not cuy?
posted by tavella at 6:15 PM on March 11, 2020

Doesn't the guy in Never Cry Wolf eat mice for a while in order to prove that the wolves he is studying are mostly hunting field mice and not big game for food except for big meals? I seem to remember that....
posted by hippybear at 7:42 PM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Pork spleen is kind of bland; in Cantonese cuisine, it's washed extensively before cooking, typically in a broth (with other ingredients). The texture is interesting; the outside is a little bit tough but fine grained. The inside is looser grained, but a little "crunchy." Very vaguely liver-like, but much less so. It processes old red blood cells but primarily it serves to educate/ select white blood cells of the adaptive immunity type.

Lung is similar without the tougher exterior. It too, has to be washed extensively before being used in a stew (to soak up the flavours/ gravy) and doesn't have a very strong flavour.

I've been told that during the cultural revolution, field mice/ voles were a preferred animal protein - they eat grain (wild or stored by humans) so were considered the cleanest. You are (well, taste like), after all, what you eat. Bear, cariboo, moose, deer all taste a little different at different times of the year, reflecting their recent diet.

I'd imagine that lab/ feeder mice taste terrible because they subsist on the cheapest of cheap kibble.

When talking about guinea pigs - I think they're referring to the very large variety found in South America [cw cooked GP] than the pet varieties found in North America.

I love the texture and taste of rabbit. Sometimes, rabbits like the taste of rabbit, too. Another benefit of rabbits is that they are rather more hygienic than chicken (they eat their own poop) and having had a pet rabbit, smell considerably less bad than indoor chickens.

I wonder if they considered miniature pot bellied pigs as a 'meaaaat innnn spaaaaace' animal.

There's a company in Canada that farms soldier fly larvae to turn into protein meal. The input is expired produce from grocery stores. Apparently, there's almost no smell and the operations are rather efficient. The protein meal has been approved for pet food and for feeding farmed salmon, with more approvals in more jurisdictions coming online.

No idea how palatable soldier fly larvae are to humans, but I've heard that silkworms are delicious.
posted by porpoise at 7:54 PM on March 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

Perhaps they should try cookie flavoured kibble.
posted by jeather at 11:22 AM on March 12, 2020

I'd like to know whether the amount of turkey-flavoured cat food bought increases around Christmas. (I suppose theoretically lamb and rabbit might also go up around Easter.) Now I need to start feeding my cats fish on Fridays.
posted by paduasoy at 2:53 AM on March 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

^turkey-flavoured = labelled with turkey as principal source of protein
posted by paduasoy at 2:54 AM on March 13, 2020