Reading the thread about Iams got me wondering about this. Can people eat dog food without suffering any ill effects? Basically I’m asking “is it bad for you health”. I was always under the impression that it was, but now I’m second guessing. I’m sure it would be utterly repulsive to eat though. I’m curious though, is it that unhealthy for people?
Years ago I read the ingredients on the food we feed Duchess (NutroMax lamb and rice). She eats a better, more balanced diet that I do.
Dogs are omnivores with carnivorous preferences. The main reason they moved in with us in the first place ws because they can eat the same things we can, and aren’t as picky so they will eat what we throw out.
I am thinking a diet of dog food exclusively migh tlead to scurvy, since dogs don’t need dietary vitamin C.
I, shamefully, had a prime opportunity to test this with experimentation, which I have lost. Yesterday, upon shelving all the various foodstuffs I acquired from the grocery store, I discovered a package of Cesar dog food that had somehow found this way into my bags. (I have one cat, but no dogs.) I checked my receipt to make sure I hadn’t been charged by an unscrupulous dog food vendor who bribed my cashier to ring up this “T-Bone steak in meaty juices”, but finding no such item on the receipt, I then proceeded to give the package to my landlord, who actually has a dog.
But rest assured, if I still had the container of dog food, I would be savoring those meaty juices right now. For science. Braving the vitamin C deficiency and the crashing waves of meaty juices, I would have added to the sum of human knowledge selflessly, with no regard for my health, tongue, or indeed anything else.
But I don’t. Sorry.
They certainly don’t taste test it with people so it could very well taste really bad compared to what humans are used to.
Simon Allison thinks it tastes bland.
He’s a senior food technologist for Marks & Spencer, with special responsibility for pet food. He samples all his products before they go on sale, although he draws the line at swallowing them.
Link.
Isn’t pet food manufactured under very relaxed standards as compared to human food? If so, who knows what’s going in there… I envision mechanically separated “this and that”, “and/or”, “may or may not contain”, etc. No thanks.
When I was a kid working in a restaurant we kept our used deep fryer grease in open 45-gallon drums out back. All kinds of stuff would collect in there, including garbage as it fell out of the adjacent, overflowing dumpsters. Occasionally, some guy would come and pick them up. “What do you do with that stuff?”. “Dog Food”, was his answer.
That just makes me think our standards are above-and-beyond what is actually required for safety alone.
Clearly the dog food isn’t actually poisonous and doesn’t make the dogs sick, so how bad can it be?
I was part of a study in a university lab about a half century ago. My only complaint was bits of bone.
A few days ago I read that sometimes the bits of bone might physically aggravate esophageal and stomach problems.
I have eaten bunches of dry dog food and cat food without any ill effect. It doesn’t taste that great but it isn’t vomit inducing either. I just wanted to see what my furry friends were consuming. There were no ill effects at all although I did notice that both my howl and sense of smell became a whole lot stronger.
When I was a kid, we had some neighbors who bred bird dogs, and so bought dry dog food by the pallet (maybe not really, but they bought a lot of it). I was visiting once when one of the kids there walked by an open bag of food, grabbed a handful, and started munching it like it was mixed nuts or something. When he saw my “ewww” reaction, he couldn’t understand, and said, “It’s fine, really, I eat it all the time. Try it.”
I did eat some a couple of years later when my older brother held me down and forced it down my throat. I’m not sure he did it out of scientific curiosity, though. I think he was just being an asshole.
Non-poisonous does not not necessarily mean non-gross-and-aesthetically-disgusting.
I had a friend growing up that liked to eat a Milkbone every day after school. I never got around to joining him but he didn’t die and liked the flavor.
I’ve been on a personally-guided tour of a pet food plant. They made dry dog and cat food that was sold as the “house brand” for various retailers like rhymes-with-SmallMart as well as things for a few name-brand lines. It’s true, the fat and meat components were typically “by products” – things that wouldn’t go into western human food because we can afford to ignore it as a food source. The day I was there they were making a dry dog food. The largest single ingredient was corn meal; it and the rest of the stuff was dumped into a huge mixer with water to make a dough, then pressed out into the little shapes and baked. The guy who gave me the tour grabbed a blob of dough and sure enough, it basically smelled like a tortilla chip. He nibbled at it (showing off a bit I think, LOL).
So yeah, edible and safe, but perhaps not a food of choice for reasons of aesthetics or personal taste.
While I’ve never eaten a large quantity of it, I’ve found the dry dog food to be alright, not delicious but edible. The treats (the ones shaped like little bones) though taste like cardboard. I don’t see how they can eat that crap.
Beggin’ Strips are awesome. They taste very much like vegan jerky, which I love, and are cheaper. And back when I ate dead animals, I used to use dog food in place of corned beef or hamburger in recipes like meat loaf or stroganoff or casseroles where it’s well-cooked and mixed with other strong-tasting foods like garlic, tomatoes, and onions. I couldn’t tell the difference in taste, and it was about a quarter the cost. And it kept my coat glossy!
IIRC, some lots of dog food have, at various times, tested positive for Salmonella, and have been vaguely implicated in some human Salmonella cases (information obtained by going to a CDC week-long conference).
Granted, the same thing happens in humans (and more frequently), but it is not completely safe.
My sister sent me this story:
Yesterday I was buying a large bag of Purina dog chow for Sophie the wonder dog at Wal-Mart and was about to check out, when a woman behind me asked me if I had a dog.
Well… Looking at the bag and realizing that it actually did say DOG FOOD, in big bold letters. . . I was a little bit curious . So . . . since I’m retired with little to do, on impulse, I told
her that no, I didn’t have a dog. I was starting the Purina Diet again, although I probably shouldn’t because I had ended up in the hospital the last time. But since I’d lost 50 pounds, before I awakened in the intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices
and IVs in both arms, I had decided to give it another try.
I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete, so I was going to try it again and just be a little more careful
this time. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now listening and enthralled with my story.)
Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food poisoned me. I told her no, I stepped off a curb to sniff an Irish Setter’s butt and a car hit me.
I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack, he was laughing so hard, he fell.
Wal-Mart has now taken away my shopping privileges.
When I was in the military, we frequently carried Milk Bones in the field with us. They were reasonably nutritious, and not perishable. They were also amongst the least offensive of the things that we ate while in the field.
I read somewhere that 10% of dog food is consumed by humans and was regulated as such. As long as you avoid melamine, of course.
The only thing I can think of that would be missing is vitamin C since most mammals, aside from primates, can synthesize it. So we need sources of it, mostly vegetable, but dogs don’t.