Cause we force them to
Ding ding ding, we have a winner!
We don’t. Burritos exist.
Damn you. Another new white t-shirt with coffee and snot stains. Take my upvote.
We do not “need” a variety of food. We eat it because we can afford it and it makes us healthier and happier.
need a variety of food to survive?
It’s not true.
Boredom feels terrible while it lasts, but it doesn’t kill you. In the end, humans usually start to get creative after boredom.
Oh, and yes, some food industry has found out things and told you things… yes, they were creative :-)
What about the British? They were starving, and they didn’t get creative. They just kept eating brown goo for centuries.
I had heard that British cuisine was much more robust before WW1.
Also, if brown goo is meat-flavored, I’d be down for it.
It is brown goo flavored, and you will eat it until you are completely brainwashed into liking it.
Got a recipe book for the British working class that was written in the 1800s, even that has curry in it.
Are you saying that the brown stuff is curry? I am a fan of curry, but the stuff I make at home is green or yellow.
People ate brown rice back in the day, and people wonder why butt cancer rates are skyrocketing now that everything has had the fiber removed. Eat fiber!
Yah, sure, we are making our curry with lentils and parsnip. I was just wondering what the curry has to do with brown goo.
I like British food. I live in Germany now and if I see another Maultasche I’m going to scream.
hmmm, looked this up… it sounds delicious and exotic !
Not when it’s the only thing served at restaurants (plus bad frozen schnitzel).
We like carbs which are often brown and make for a good hangover food. Not sure about goo though?
I suppose that’s why we added mild pain to our diet. Mix things up a bit.
Daily reminder that pet food is a more recent industry and before it existed pets mostly ate table scraps.
…why the fuck did i waste time reading all that
Animal food is usually balanced to contain all the nutriens the animal needs, or most.
Ofc if it’s proper
Well. We always have Soylent green …
My current cats have Opinions (capital O) about what is or isn’t food. I tried giving them variety, at least in flavour. They don’t want it. The want one specific brand of fish-flavored wet food (in jelly, not gravy). They’ll eat some kinds of fish-flavored kibble if wet food isn’t available. Anything else, they have to be pretty desperate.
At least they both like the same stuff! But the lack of variety is 100% on them, not me.
(My previous cats would eat most things. These two are just weird.)
To add on to other peoples answers regarding the complete nutritional makeup of pet food; many animals can make a variety of the amino acids they need to survive with just a few inputs (like deer and cows eating only (mostly) plants), but some, especially predatory animals, cannot. They get those nutrients from the prey they eat, which in turn got them from the plants.
It essentially comes down to which enzymes any given organism can create, which ones their DNA codes for *or which microorganisms are allowed to exist within their system. Humans can’t make a bunch of these amino acids themselves. Many (maybe all of them, not that far into my class yet) of the reactions taking in place in any living organism are entirely reliant on enzymes to catalyze them; that is, without them these reactions would take millions of years to complete.
BTW there are appr. 37x1017 (3,700,000,000,000,000,000) reactions happening in your body every second. All of them (or at least a great majority of them) require enzymes to complete.
You as a human could also live with the same food every day if it covered every dietary need. Especially if you depended on someone else to acquire it and had no choice.
There is an evolutionary push for a rich variety of nutrients obtained from a variety of sources, but the mechanism driving that daily “need” for variety is force of habit and desire for novelty. On top of that, some people are happy to eat nothing but junk and have very narrow tastes. How come?
Also, I can assure you, a lot of cats will periodically stop eating a certain brand or flavor and go through cycles. Does it mean the food isn’t really covering their needs or are they just bored of the same flavor every day? Hard to know, but I would argue your assumption about humans being too different from their pets when it comes to variety in their menu.
I’m a living proof that you can eat the same thing every day for decades and be just fine.
If the food you’re eating doesn’t contain all the nutrients you need you’re unhealthy as fuck and it will come back to haunt you.
What do you eat daily?
Not the other guy but i have been eating the same thing every day for lunch for a yearish now. Chicken, carrots , potato. I found a great seasoning mix that works great and its a decent lunch. I have really bad stomach issues and this keeps that mostly in check. Mostly.
I’ve been eating the same thing for almost a year at this point as well.
We don’t
How can I survive off of that, if they’re out of stock for half the year? ;-;
Buy double in the half year when it is available
Usually can’t afford that much upfront, wish I could tho.
I did make the comment in jest, though I appreciate the candor lol
That aside, I don’t have an idea if it’s even a viable approach considering the potential expiration dates and storage condition requirements, assuming one would even be willing to pay the exorbitant price to buy it as their main source of nourishment
Im just pointing out we can make a human food just like we make cat food and dog food and indeed have. Soylent sorta started it but there are a variety of other things now doing the same thing with twists (all vegan or organic, etc) and even before then we had meal replacement shakes and bars and actually there is this emergency food called plumpy nut that is actually made to nurse someone back from severe starvation. All sorts of bunker survival ration bar things to which are fairly common as boat things.
Cats and similar animals are adapted to specific environmental niches, but humans are generalists. One of the drawbacks of being generalists is that we’re not specialized enough to fully subsist on any single food source.
We can definitely subsist on a single food source if it’s been engineered to be nutritionally complete like pet food has.
There are lots of dogs and cats who crave variety in their diets, too. Like humans, it’s a behavioral thing rather than a nutritional necessity. My shepherd will simply stop eating regularly unless I vary her diet. I usually have three or so options I rotate through to keep her interested in eating. Lots of people add toppers and mix-ins when they have dogs like mine, but I find that only increases food rejection, as smart pups learn to hold out until we sweeten the deal enough.
I worked for a pet food manufacturer, and it amazed me what customers would do to try to entice their picky pets to eat. One guy was giving his dog lasagna, and he was shocked that his dog didn’t want to eat kibble anymore. Imagine that.
