Obviously it’s tough to know what’s going on in a dog’s mind, but has anybody done a test to see if a dog or other type of animal will go for an Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat patty as enthusiastically as it would towards a real beef patty? Maybe put a real beef patty and a fake beef patty side by side and see if dogs have a preference?
If not you could always grind up some Beggin’ Strips into the patties because dogs don’t know it’s not bacon.
My friend’s dog won’t eat real meat. She wasn’t trained to be that way, she just naturally eats vegetarian. We try to feed her meat all the time and she just leaves it. That being said, she also ignores generic veggie burgers, so I guess she is indeed fooled? She will eat ALL of your fries though, if given the chance.
Edit: MY dogs would eat whatever I’m eating though. Veggie burger/beef/asparagus, didn’t matter.
Not sure about impossible/beyond meat burgers though.
Some dogs will eat just about anything, so I don’t think those dogs would hesitate to eat both patties. Would some dogs be picky enough to only eat the real beef patty? Probably.
In this video, the dog chooses an impossible burger over a meat burger. This video tests four dogs, and it’s a tie, with two dogs choosing impossible burgers and two choosing meat burgers.
I assume they load the stuff with something that tastes like meat. Maybe more so than real meat. So I wouldn’t be surprised if dogs loved it. I suppose the stuff is available around here somewhere and I could try it out on the boys. But I have the kind of dogs dolphinboy mentioned, they’ll eat just about anything.
Exactly what I was looking for, thanks!
I’ve read that dog treats and food are often designed to be appealing to the humans buying the treats and food. They have appearances and smells that appeal to us as being things dogs like. But dogs see and smell much differently than us. We may smell the bacon on the dog treat, but the dog can additionally smell every ingredient in the treat. Dogs eat it because they eat most things, not because they’re fooled that it’s bacon.
So with things like Impossible meat, I’m certain that dogs know it is different than real meat. Their noses are sensitive enough to easily realize they are very different things. If humans can tell the difference, dogs can do so even better. If it tastes better than real meat, dogs will eat it instead. However, that can be said about just about any food–if it tastes better, dogs will prefer it.
What kind of oil does your friend fry the fries in? 
My obese Beagle would jump on a fake burger as quick as a real meat burger. She don’t care. I dropped a banana peel the other day and she inhaled it before I could bend over to pick it up.
I think specifically as to the title, it’s almost certain that dogs are not “fooled”. That is, if you had a dog trained to identify real meat (like drug dogs), that dog would almost certainly know that fake meat was not real meat. It’s likely that dogs can be trained to uniquely identify each kind of meat (beef, pork, chicken, etc).
In the same way that dogs have much better smell than humans, humans have much better vision than dogs. With our enhanced vision we might be able to see the difference between FM and RM, but a dog might not. To a dog, the cooked patties could look indistinguishable. But even if the patties smelled and tasted identical to us, the enhanced smell capability of a dog would likely be able to tell they were different foods once they could smell them.
For that matter, you could almost certainly train a human to recognize the differences between real meat burgers and Impossible Burgers.
TriPolar, they’re selling them now at at least some Burger King locations, if you (or your dog) wants to give them a try.
Dogs are omnivores. They’ll eat anything. I doubt an Impossible burger would fool a dog into thinking he’s eating real meat, but he would eat it anyway if he thought it was tasty.
Would a pet dog even understand what “real meat” is? I suspect it’s all just food given to them by their owner/mentor of varying degrees of tastiness, without them thinking: “Aha! The flesh of an animal.”
I suspect this actually represents a case of a dog raised on a vegetarian diet that isn’t familiar with eating meat - and a freakishly rare example at that. There’s nothing "natural’ about meat avoidance in a dog.
Including an Omni, if broken down into bite-sized pieces.
Dogs and cats will eat what they eat, and who knows? My dog is as willing to eat textured vegetable protein as he is meat. One of my cats will eat anything (and then throw it up). Examples: tulips, the strap of my favorite handbag, a little plastic flower, my grandkids’ sidewalk chalk, and I don’t know what that thing was, maybe pasta? But urk.
I did once try a test to see which treats my dog preferred, leftover steak or blueberry dog cookies. He preferred steak.
He will be much more responsive to training if we’re using leftover steak as the treat than if we’re using dog treats, even all meat dog treats.
Now is this because we, the humans, put more value on actual steak, and he senses that? Or does he really prefer the taste of real steak?
He won’t eat raw chicken. Is this because we, the humans, are a little skittish about raw chicken and wear gloves when cooking it, or does he really not like the taste of raw chicken?
We do not know.
I doubt it… even people aren’t fooled. I had a Beyond Meat taco the other day. While it wasn’t bad, it certainly wasn’t fooling anyone as to its meaty status. With their better sense of smell, I don’t doubt that dogs and cats could easily tell that it’s not meat. Now they may still think it smells tasty, but I’m sure that if I could tell, so could they.
I don’t think dogs would care all that much. Have you ever looked at the ingredients in dog treats?
Our dog is also an omnivore, but her favorite treats are made at a brewery over in Jacksonville (Veteran’s United - if you’re in the area, check them out!). They take a bunch of the spent grain and make dog treats out of it. No meat involved, but she goes nuts when we bring them home. She can literally smell them within seconds of us walking through the door.
She’s over 70 lbs, so I have no doubt that she would eat BOTH the Beyond Meat and Real Meat burgers - and ask where the rest is!
She was protecting you, to keep you from slipping on it. LOL!
Well, no. But they definitely consider meat and milk products to be greater treats than any other foods. And they have their preferences. I had a German Shepherd who was the smartest, most obedient dog I’ve ever encountered, but she would lose her mind in the presence of bacon or ham.
Likewise the current CeltDog would do anything for fish, and specifically salmon. He knows flounder isn’t salmon, but he’ll take both over hamburger (which he also loves). They usually aren’t picky, but they have their levels of discernment.
Except Labradors*. Labs will eat things a goat wouldn’t touch.
*and some beagles, apparently.