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Sampling man’s best friend’s lunch |
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Written by asap
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Sunday, 13 August 2006 |
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AP Photo/Sharon Theimer
Baxter noses in for a bite.
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SILVER SPRING, Md. — Serving my dogs their top-shelf dog food each day, I’ve noticed that some of it looks and smells better than my typical dinner of, say, cereal. With premium and organic dog food running as much as $1.50 a can or more, their meal often costs more than mine.
Which made me wonder: Is human-grade dog food actually palatable to humans?
This was a question worthy of a taste test. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get past the fact that it is, well, dog food, so I needed to find someone who could overcome that mental hurdle and see it as simply food. Sort of the way a coroner can think of a corpse as just a body.
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AP Photo/Sharon Theimer
Kanga gives John moral support.
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That led me to AP environmental reporter John Heilprin, whose love of climbing has taken him to far-flung places like Nepal, China and Pakistan on treks that sometimes meant subsisting on rice, lentils or potatoes for weeks. Once, caught in a blizzard in Wyoming, he hiked for five days without any food at all. John gamely agreed to be the test subject.
I prepared three courses.
To start, Merrick’s Napa Valley Picnic -- a blend of duck, brown rice, carrots, spinach, sugar peas and golden apples -- served chilled with chilled pasta. The label said it all: “The getaway is perfect and the picnic blanket has been spread.”
Next up: By Nature Organics Organic Chicken, Carrots & Peas, served hot over rice.
Then the ultimate challenge: Presented with two bowls of steaming beef stew, could John tell which was the one for people and which was Evanger’s Braised Beef Chunks with Gravy for dogs?
The canned food I chose is human-grade, meaning it’s safe for human consumption. The labels proclaimed the food either super premium, organic or “healthy and well balanced.” Industry statistics rank “premium” varieties the fastest-growing part of the U.S. dog food market, accounting for about $3.8 billion of at least $7.8 billion in dog food sales last year.
Something I didn’t know when I gave John the test is that the federal government requires all dog food, whatever the price, to be human-grade.
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TASTE TIME
Enough talk. The camera is rolling, the Napa Valley Picnic is nestled in its chilled macaroni with a flower garnish on the side, and it is time for John to give it a try.
Amazingly, it isn’t revolting.
“It’s a little bland, actually, but it’s food,” John says. “It tastes like refried brown beans that have been refried so many times there’s no flavor left.”
After the initial taste, condiments are allowed. John adds salt and pepper.
“It tastes like very bland refried beans with a little bit of salt and pepper,” he says. As for the texture: “It’s hard to describe it. It tastes like dog food. But it does taste like food. Just bad food out of a can.”
On to the next challenge: the steaming chicken blend in a brown heap over rice.
“This is chicken? OK that’s not very good,” he says. “This one is taste-free. I mean, if I put salt and pepper on it, it would taste like salt and pepper.”
Then the big test: people stew vs. dog stew. Both were around $2 a can, and interestingly, John couldn’t tell which was which just by looking at them.
He tastes the first one. “That at least has some flavor.” He tries the other. “It’s blander. It must be the dog food. But you know, it’s not awful.”
John is right: The one with flavor is the people stew (Dinty Moore).
“You can tell there’s a ton of chemicals and salt and pepper and preservatives and whatnot put in this thing,” John says. “And actually, I bet if you put the same stuff into this one,” he adds, gesturing to the dog food, “you could probably jack this one up to people taste.”
He agrees to test it, and pours on salt and pepper.
“Yeah, it helps a lot,” John says. In fact, the dog one actually had more the texture of beef stew than the people one did, he says, and with tons of salt and pepper, and maybe some Tobasco sauce, could probably be passed off as people food.
So, back to our original question: “Is human-grade dog food actually palatable to humans?”
“I’d say it depends which kind. Some of it, yeah, it’s possible, I think, with enough spicing,” John says. “Generally, no. Generally, obviously, it’s really bland.”
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WHY SO BLAND?
It turns out dogs do have taste buds, though thousands fewer than humans have, and are sensitive to smell and texture. To explain why dog food seems so bland to people, one expert said the closest comparison is baby food, which also has little or no sugar and salt and tastes bland to adults used to seasonings and fat in their food.
“We’ve just not adapted dog food to those tastes that we as humans have become accustomed to,” said Dr. Bettye Walters, a veterinarian and director of the Center for Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine.
American Pet Products Manufacturers Association president Robert Vetere said dog food’s lack of salt is probably its biggest difference from human food. That is good for dogs’ blood pressure and would be good for people, too, he said.
Is he suggesting humans should consider making the switch?
“I wouldn’t recommend converting yourself completely to an Alpo diet,” he said, “but I think that it would not be particularly harmful to you in any given meal.”
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asap contributor Sharon Theimer is a member of the AP’s multimedia investigative reporting team in Washington.
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