5 ms·

Improving cat food flavors with the help of feline taste-testers

36 points by politelemon 2y ago

bell-cot 2y ago
> The researchers found that most cats preferred and ate more of the foods sprayed with their attractants, particularly the sprays with proteins that were further broken-down by the enzymes and contained more free amino acids. Even-yummier premium cat food would probably sell quite well. OTOH: Of the cat owners I've known, quite a few have described their cats as overweight - to degrees which were of concern for their cats' health. But unless some major health problem was the root cause, I can't recall a single cat being described an unhealthily underweight.
- ajb 2y ago
  Some cats will self regulate intake to maintain a healthy weight, but a large fraction will not. If your cat is one of these then you need to regulate it's intake. But I think it's also a bad idea to reduce abruptly.
  - kortilla 2y ago
    > But I think it's also a bad idea to reduce abruptly. Why? That’s usually the advice from vets. Immediately take away free feeding and switch to portions that result in a calorie deficit until they get to a healthy weight.
    - userid1303 2y ago
      Reducing a cat's caloric intake too quickly will result in hepatic lipidosis (fatty liver). This only takes days and is very likely to result in death without immediate veterinary intervention.
      - doublepg23 2y ago
        Do you have a source for this, even Wikipedia doesn’t seem to name a cause for this disease.
        jprete 2y ago
        Not the GP but https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/liver-disease-fatty-liver-syndrome-in-cats https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/liver-disease-fatty-l... I have never personally heard that a cat could get fatty liver disease from undereating, but I have heard it's a risk if they don't eat anything all for 24 hours.
        b112 2y ago
        In greater than 90% of cats, an underlying disease has caused the inappetence. These may include inflammatory bowel disease, other types of liver disease, cancer, pancreatitis, anxiety, respiratory disease and diabetes mellitus. So in 90% of these cases, cats were very ill with some other dosease, causing them to forgo food, and this additional symptom sets in. It should be noted: * the other 10% could be due to unidentified other issues * this has nothing to do with withholding food, but with cats purposefully not eating food
      - b112 2y ago
        So cats die in the wild, if they cannot catch mice for a few days? No mammal I know of dies due to food interruptions of a mere few days. This sounds wildly inaccurate.
        jaggederest 2y ago
        Cats hunt 20-50 times a day, with approximately a 50% success rate. No cat in an environment with any available prey goes more than a few hours without eating something. They're not like lions or other climax predators, who eat much less regularly.
        b112 2y ago
        There are droughts, there are dry seasons and yes for wild cats, and cat ancestors too. Cats can go weeks without food and manage to survive, and going days during tough times is a certainty.
        jaggederest 2y ago
        They'd almost never go from a full diet back to zero instantly though. If you reduce their intake over time, even a few days, they don't develop liver issues.
        ajb 2y ago
        They usually won't be starting from obese though.
        jprete 2y ago
        I agree with the sibling comment about small cats hunting very very frequently, and I'd also add that animals cache food for exactly the reason of avoiding starvation. Small mammals also have quicker metabolisms, and their surface-to-volume ratio is worse than a large mammal so they need a steadier supply of food just to maintain their body temperature. Plenty of mammals also hibernate, and they have to fatten up ahead of time to survive it.
        2y ago
      - kortilla 2y ago
        Deficit doesn’t mean 0 calories. Don’t be dramatic
    - ajb 2y ago
      That's not the advice I've got. I've heard a vet advise reducing only 10% a week for a very overweight cat. For my (not very overweight) cats, the advice was not to go to deficit, but to switch to an amount that would be a maintenance amount for the correct weight. Which was presumably not very different to their previous intake. I don't have strong evidence here (hence "I think" above). I'm not a vet and I'm definitely not YOUR vet .
      - kortilla 2y ago
        A maintenance amount for their correct weight is a deficit.
- hanniabu 2y ago
  Indoor cats are often under-stimulated and depressed and have nothing to do to pass the time except to eat and sleep
  - jbaber 2y ago
    I agree inside a house is more boring than an alley, but have you seen how much time big cats spend sleeping?
  - kennyadam 2y ago
    I have had a few cats that had cat flaps, so they could come and go as they pleased. They slept indoors, often on the warmest lap they could find, a lot. However, they also disappeared into the trees and bushes in the neighborhood for hours at a time and often came back grubby and spent ages cleaning themselves. Pretty obviously a sign they had been doing something engaging. When I visited my friends who had indoor cats, they always seemed either timid or bored, spending hours just sitting looking out windows or sleeping. I always found it hard to watch a cat staring out at the world, with their only stimulation/interaction happening in the small amount of time each day when people were at home and not busy with something else or sleeping.
    - kccqzy 2y ago
      It's that choice between a short but fulfilling life, or a long and mediocre one. A lot of humans disagree on which they prefer too.
      - sonofhans 2y ago
        No cats would disagree, though, except those already conditioned to captivity. Any cat, given a free choice from birth and treated well, will choose to spend time both indoors and outdoors. I’d argue the same about humans, frankly. The only ones content to stay indoors all day are those conditioned to, and damaged by, the captivity.
      - kennyadam 2y ago
        Two of our cats died in their mid-teens of old cat illness, and we chose to have them put to sleep at home, purring on someone's lap. The other medical options the vet suggested in each case would have given the cats a bit more time, but it would have been a poor quality of life for them and nothing we wanted to see them put through. The only cat that lived a short life had nothing to do with being allowed outside. He was the most unique cat I've ever encountered. He'd could use door handles, play fetch, come and get you if he wanted to go out and the cat flap had been locked for whatever reason, would wait for me at the end of my road when I walked home from work and would then wait for my to start running and race me to the front door. Sadly he was born with a condition that meant he passed away before he turned 5, but he was happy and playful every day. Losing him impacted me more than I would have believed possible. Anyway, I just wanted to say that it's not such a binary choice. As long as you don't live right next to a road with lots of traffic, cats that can come and go as they please don't necessarily live short lives. It's just idiots who think all cats can learn to live alongside fast cars that end up with young dead cats.
- wl 2y ago
  Anecdote: I’ve got an otherwise healthy cat who requires an appetite stimulant to stay at a healthy weight.
onion2k 2y ago
My two cats don't appear to care what flavor food I give them so long as there's a lot of variety. Giving them the same flavor for a few days results in untouched food. I have to cycle a few different brands and types to keep them from wasting a lot of food. Which I do, of course, because they're in charge.
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  Cats are so intelligent they managed to hack humanity's need to serve for their own self interests. My cats show me fleeting amounts of affection and it just makes me want to do more things for them. Compared to my dog, a cat's independence creates an unspoken understanding that they are only here as long as I keep them happy.
  - notepad0x90 2y ago
    > unspoken understanding that they are only here as long as I keep them happy. This is a big misunderstanding people keep repeating. You expect cats to act like dogs and then assume the reason why that isn't the case is because you don't keep them happy, which is only partially true. Think of this differently, cats are like people, they consider themselves in a social relationship with you. If you have a friend over but don't entertain them, spend time with them or give them foods and drinks that are tasty, then they may not want to hang out at your place a lot in the future right? Also,similar to humans, they don't show you their personality right away, they are very guarded and won't reveal themselves and open up unless you do the same. Cats have a very high emotional intelligence compared to other pets. They are the only animals that have domesticated themselves. They consider themselves our partners not our servants (unlike dogs), and historically speaking they would be right, since cats living indoors has only been a thing since the cat litter was invented 40-50 years ago. Before that, they had lots of uses like chasing mice and other pests or keeping humans entertained,a mutually beneficial relationship if you will. in many ways they were useful to humans more than even most other humans at times. In short, you get from having a cat what you put into that relationship, just like with people and each cat has it's own personality. Don't compare them to your dog, dogs are domesticated by humans and heavily bred with a purpose. Think of having a cat being more like befriending a wild animal instead of having an obedient servant.
post_break 2y ago
Switching my cat to raw food has been the best thing I could have done. It’s not cheap but it saved his life due to IBD. Wish it was more wide spread to bring the price down.
- walthamstow 2y ago
  Our little guy gets a mixed diet of half dry kibbles, half raw food. He loves it and his digestion is so much better than when he is on kibble only. I have managed to keep the cost down by buying it in bulk. We get 1kg frozen bricks of minced turkey/rabbit meat/bones/offal/blood that I defrost in the fridge and batch into containers that hold 2 days worth and refreeze. I don't know where you live but this is the website I use in the UK https://www.kiezebrink.co.uk/ https://www.kiezebrink.co.uk/
ziofill 2y ago
I have a friend who tasted dog food and cat food (don’t ask) and swears that cat food is a hundred times worse ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- adolfojp 2y ago
  I can confirm.
- gbuk2013 2y ago
  I agree with your friend that it tastes worse, but only like 3 times worse. :)
- matsemann 2y ago
  Some cat food is basically canned tuna. Tasted fine to me. But the stuff we normally serve smells vile.
shepherdjerred 2y ago
Is it "inhumane" to feed cats (or other animals) the same thing every day? Should one try to give them as much variety as humans prefer? I've given my cats the same food for years. I don't think that's abnormal, but I don't think I would enjoy being fed the same thing (aside from occasional treats) for my entire life.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Is it "inhumane" to feed cats (or other animals) the same thing every day? Plenty of people eat the same thing every day. If your cat is fine with it and you’re fine with it I don’t see the issue. (I say this as someone who loves food, eats a variety of it, and so does my cat and did my dog.)
  - blitzar 2y ago
    My cat ate fillet steak for dinner every night, the only complaint would be if it was not chopped fine enough and he would send it back with orders to try again.
  - shepherdjerred 2y ago
    Are there really people that eat the same meal, breakfast/lunch/dinner, for the vast majority of their lives? I don't think anyone would choose that, though I'm sure one could do it if the circumstances demanded it, e.g. due to poverty or being Dr. Mark Watney. > If your cat is fine with it How would one know? My cat's options are to: * Eat what's available * Starve
- ajb 2y ago
  They do like variety. But if they get the same food every day for a long time, they may be unable to accept other food, which could be a problem if you need to change their diet due to a health condition. (But this is from a book I read 30 years ago so there is likely more recent advice) Do you give them a food which has different flavours? That might be enough. I tend to switch mine occasionally.
  - 2y ago
fny 2y ago
Fun fact: pet food is professionally taste tested by humans.
hetspookjee 2y ago
I love cats and this way of thinking. I had a pet rabbit for some years and often wondered why the food seemed to be more geared towards what humans would like (e.g. cream strawberry candies), rather than what would be nice for a rabbit. Off topic, but I wish there was a way to marry the desire for a feline partner and the survival of native bird species. Here in the suburb of Utrecht in the Netherlands they do wreak havoc on the local bird population. I like to feed the magpies to keep the cats a bit at bay as they are so aggresive towards cats. Sure, magpies also eat birds but they're so far inferior in hunting (and already well fed) that I'm sure their presence is a net positive for the smaller bird species in the neighborhood. I don't see another way cause forcing your cat to remain inside is also not fair towards the cat, but introducing them in a foreign hunting game walhalla is also not right.

36 points by politelemon 2y ago

> The researchers found that most cats preferred and ate more of the foods sprayed with their attractants, particularly the sprays with proteins that were further broken-down by the enzymes and contained more free amino acids. Even-yummier premium cat food would probably sell quite well. OTOH: Of the cat owners I've known, quite a few have described their cats as overweight - to degrees which were of concern for their cats' health. But unless some major health problem was the root cause, I can't recall a single cat being described an unhealthily underweight.

ajb 2y ago
Some cats will self regulate intake to maintain a healthy weight, but a large fraction will not. If your cat is one of these then you need to regulate it's intake. But I think it's also a bad idea to reduce abruptly.
- kortilla 2y ago
  > But I think it's also a bad idea to reduce abruptly. Why? That’s usually the advice from vets. Immediately take away free feeding and switch to portions that result in a calorie deficit until they get to a healthy weight.
  - userid1303 2y ago
    Reducing a cat's caloric intake too quickly will result in hepatic lipidosis (fatty liver). This only takes days and is very likely to result in death without immediate veterinary intervention.
    - doublepg23 2y ago
      Do you have a source for this, even Wikipedia doesn’t seem to name a cause for this disease.
      - jprete 2y ago
        Not the GP but https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/liver-disease-fatty-liver-syndrome-in-cats https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/liver-disease-fatty-l... I have never personally heard that a cat could get fatty liver disease from undereating, but I have heard it's a risk if they don't eat anything all for 24 hours.
        b112 2y ago
        In greater than 90% of cats, an underlying disease has caused the inappetence. These may include inflammatory bowel disease, other types of liver disease, cancer, pancreatitis, anxiety, respiratory disease and diabetes mellitus. So in 90% of these cases, cats were very ill with some other dosease, causing them to forgo food, and this additional symptom sets in. It should be noted: * the other 10% could be due to unidentified other issues * this has nothing to do with withholding food, but with cats purposefully not eating food
    - b112 2y ago
      So cats die in the wild, if they cannot catch mice for a few days? No mammal I know of dies due to food interruptions of a mere few days. This sounds wildly inaccurate.
      - jaggederest 2y ago
        Cats hunt 20-50 times a day, with approximately a 50% success rate. No cat in an environment with any available prey goes more than a few hours without eating something. They're not like lions or other climax predators, who eat much less regularly.
        b112 2y ago
        There are droughts, there are dry seasons and yes for wild cats, and cat ancestors too. Cats can go weeks without food and manage to survive, and going days during tough times is a certainty.
        jaggederest 2y ago
        They'd almost never go from a full diet back to zero instantly though. If you reduce their intake over time, even a few days, they don't develop liver issues.
        ajb 2y ago
        They usually won't be starting from obese though.
      - jprete 2y ago
        I agree with the sibling comment about small cats hunting very very frequently, and I'd also add that animals cache food for exactly the reason of avoiding starvation. Small mammals also have quicker metabolisms, and their surface-to-volume ratio is worse than a large mammal so they need a steadier supply of food just to maintain their body temperature. Plenty of mammals also hibernate, and they have to fatten up ahead of time to survive it.
        2y ago
    - kortilla 2y ago
      Deficit doesn’t mean 0 calories. Don’t be dramatic
  - ajb 2y ago
    That's not the advice I've got. I've heard a vet advise reducing only 10% a week for a very overweight cat. For my (not very overweight) cats, the advice was not to go to deficit, but to switch to an amount that would be a maintenance amount for the correct weight. Which was presumably not very different to their previous intake. I don't have strong evidence here (hence "I think" above). I'm not a vet and I'm definitely not YOUR vet .
    - kortilla 2y ago
      A maintenance amount for their correct weight is a deficit.
hanniabu 2y ago
Indoor cats are often under-stimulated and depressed and have nothing to do to pass the time except to eat and sleep
- jbaber 2y ago
  I agree inside a house is more boring than an alley, but have you seen how much time big cats spend sleeping?
- kennyadam 2y ago
  I have had a few cats that had cat flaps, so they could come and go as they pleased. They slept indoors, often on the warmest lap they could find, a lot. However, they also disappeared into the trees and bushes in the neighborhood for hours at a time and often came back grubby and spent ages cleaning themselves. Pretty obviously a sign they had been doing something engaging. When I visited my friends who had indoor cats, they always seemed either timid or bored, spending hours just sitting looking out windows or sleeping. I always found it hard to watch a cat staring out at the world, with their only stimulation/interaction happening in the small amount of time each day when people were at home and not busy with something else or sleeping.
  - kccqzy 2y ago
    It's that choice between a short but fulfilling life, or a long and mediocre one. A lot of humans disagree on which they prefer too.
    - sonofhans 2y ago
      No cats would disagree, though, except those already conditioned to captivity. Any cat, given a free choice from birth and treated well, will choose to spend time both indoors and outdoors. I’d argue the same about humans, frankly. The only ones content to stay indoors all day are those conditioned to, and damaged by, the captivity.
    - kennyadam 2y ago
      Two of our cats died in their mid-teens of old cat illness, and we chose to have them put to sleep at home, purring on someone's lap. The other medical options the vet suggested in each case would have given the cats a bit more time, but it would have been a poor quality of life for them and nothing we wanted to see them put through. The only cat that lived a short life had nothing to do with being allowed outside. He was the most unique cat I've ever encountered. He'd could use door handles, play fetch, come and get you if he wanted to go out and the cat flap had been locked for whatever reason, would wait for me at the end of my road when I walked home from work and would then wait for my to start running and race me to the front door. Sadly he was born with a condition that meant he passed away before he turned 5, but he was happy and playful every day. Losing him impacted me more than I would have believed possible. Anyway, I just wanted to say that it's not such a binary choice. As long as you don't live right next to a road with lots of traffic, cats that can come and go as they please don't necessarily live short lives. It's just idiots who think all cats can learn to live alongside fast cars that end up with young dead cats.
wl 2y ago
Anecdote: I’ve got an otherwise healthy cat who requires an appetite stimulant to stay at a healthy weight.

onion2k 2y ago

My two cats don't appear to care what flavor food I give them so long as there's a lot of variety. Giving them the same flavor for a few days results in untouched food. I have to cycle a few different brands and types to keep them from wasting a lot of food. Which I do, of course, because they're in charge.

candiddevmike 2y ago
Cats are so intelligent they managed to hack humanity's need to serve for their own self interests. My cats show me fleeting amounts of affection and it just makes me want to do more things for them. Compared to my dog, a cat's independence creates an unspoken understanding that they are only here as long as I keep them happy.
- notepad0x90 2y ago
  > unspoken understanding that they are only here as long as I keep them happy. This is a big misunderstanding people keep repeating. You expect cats to act like dogs and then assume the reason why that isn't the case is because you don't keep them happy, which is only partially true. Think of this differently, cats are like people, they consider themselves in a social relationship with you. If you have a friend over but don't entertain them, spend time with them or give them foods and drinks that are tasty, then they may not want to hang out at your place a lot in the future right? Also,similar to humans, they don't show you their personality right away, they are very guarded and won't reveal themselves and open up unless you do the same. Cats have a very high emotional intelligence compared to other pets. They are the only animals that have domesticated themselves. They consider themselves our partners not our servants (unlike dogs), and historically speaking they would be right, since cats living indoors has only been a thing since the cat litter was invented 40-50 years ago. Before that, they had lots of uses like chasing mice and other pests or keeping humans entertained,a mutually beneficial relationship if you will. in many ways they were useful to humans more than even most other humans at times. In short, you get from having a cat what you put into that relationship, just like with people and each cat has it's own personality. Don't compare them to your dog, dogs are domesticated by humans and heavily bred with a purpose. Think of having a cat being more like befriending a wild animal instead of having an obedient servant.

post_break 2y ago

Switching my cat to raw food has been the best thing I could have done. It’s not cheap but it saved his life due to IBD. Wish it was more wide spread to bring the price down.

walthamstow 2y ago
Our little guy gets a mixed diet of half dry kibbles, half raw food. He loves it and his digestion is so much better than when he is on kibble only. I have managed to keep the cost down by buying it in bulk. We get 1kg frozen bricks of minced turkey/rabbit meat/bones/offal/blood that I defrost in the fridge and batch into containers that hold 2 days worth and refreeze. I don't know where you live but this is the website I use in the UK https://www.kiezebrink.co.uk/ https://www.kiezebrink.co.uk/

ziofill 2y ago

I have a friend who tasted dog food and cat food (don’t ask) and swears that cat food is a hundred times worse ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

adolfojp 2y ago
I can confirm.
gbuk2013 2y ago
I agree with your friend that it tastes worse, but only like 3 times worse. :)
matsemann 2y ago
Some cat food is basically canned tuna. Tasted fine to me. But the stuff we normally serve smells vile.

shepherdjerred 2y ago

Is it "inhumane" to feed cats (or other animals) the same thing every day? Should one try to give them as much variety as humans prefer? I've given my cats the same food for years. I don't think that's abnormal, but I don't think I would enjoy being fed the same thing (aside from occasional treats) for my entire life.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Is it "inhumane" to feed cats (or other animals) the same thing every day? Plenty of people eat the same thing every day. If your cat is fine with it and you’re fine with it I don’t see the issue. (I say this as someone who loves food, eats a variety of it, and so does my cat and did my dog.)
- blitzar 2y ago
  My cat ate fillet steak for dinner every night, the only complaint would be if it was not chopped fine enough and he would send it back with orders to try again.
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  Are there really people that eat the same meal, breakfast/lunch/dinner, for the vast majority of their lives? I don't think anyone would choose that, though I'm sure one could do it if the circumstances demanded it, e.g. due to poverty or being Dr. Mark Watney. > If your cat is fine with it How would one know? My cat's options are to: * Eat what's available * Starve
ajb 2y ago
They do like variety. But if they get the same food every day for a long time, they may be unable to accept other food, which could be a problem if you need to change their diet due to a health condition. (But this is from a book I read 30 years ago so there is likely more recent advice) Do you give them a food which has different flavours? That might be enough. I tend to switch mine occasionally.
- 2y ago

fny 2y ago

Fun fact: pet food is professionally taste tested by humans.

hetspookjee 2y ago

I love cats and this way of thinking. I had a pet rabbit for some years and often wondered why the food seemed to be more geared towards what humans would like (e.g. cream strawberry candies), rather than what would be nice for a rabbit. Off topic, but I wish there was a way to marry the desire for a feline partner and the survival of native bird species. Here in the suburb of Utrecht in the Netherlands they do wreak havoc on the local bird population. I like to feed the magpies to keep the cats a bit at bay as they are so aggresive towards cats. Sure, magpies also eat birds but they're so far inferior in hunting (and already well fed) that I'm sure their presence is a net positive for the smaller bird species in the neighborhood. I don't see another way cause forcing your cat to remain inside is also not fair towards the cat, but introducing them in a foreign hunting game walhalla is also not right.