Why is there no Cat/Dog food equivalent for people?

While walking by a box of cat food the other day my mind went down a weird thought process that ended with the above question. My cat lived for 19 years and during that she ate the same cat food day in day out with the only addition to her diet being the odd mouse/bird/insect she would hunt down and devour.

If they can make a food that has all the nutrition needed to keep an animal alive for 19 years why isn't there a human equivalent? Are human bodies more complex and require more to live then animals? Obviously it would suck eating the same thing all the time, but I'm sure they could flavour and texture the stuff differently for variety and just because you have it doesn't mean you can sometimes eat something else when you just need a change of pace.

https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body

@banefirelord: The pure whiteness burned my eyes. What does that site talk about? Is it some kind of cult?

@crusader8463: It's basically a nutrient rich sludge that you drink instead of eating food.

@crusader8463: Its basically an all in one meal replacement in a shake format, essentially what you were theorizing existing for humans, and there are plenty of other all in one replacements for meals out there often used in the health food industry or by people trying to lose weight.

I cant speak of the health benefits to any of these items, I'd guess they're healthy ~enough~ to live long term off of but there must be something lost when going so far outside of the natural diet. I'm sure there are min/maxers out there who could argue it convincingly either way. It is definitely an interesting observation and thought though.

That soylent company is charging 3 dollars a meal though... still pretty pricey when you can eat for much less then that; but I guess you're paying for the convenience of not having to prepare anything and it definitely beats fast food.

@junkerman: Ya, there's tons of meal supplements that you can get in bar/drink form but I have never seen anything that is a full on you can eat nothing but this for life and live off of it. All those supplements are 1-2 meals a day replacers but they still require you to eat real food. From my limited understanding anyway.

Something like the link above is neat, but $3 a meal is way too much. If they could get it down to $3 a day then that might be something.

@banefirelord: At least it's not green.

I only eat spam and I'm just as healthy as my cat.

Came here to post what banefirelord did

There's already a cat food equivalent for people. It's called cat food.

If you had to eat the same thing every meal every day you'd go nuts. Apparently the Pilgrims practically did when one winter all they had to eat was fish.

@video_game_king: Cat food you say?

@demoskinos:

Now I want to learn how to use MMD just so I can make Miku wolf down some cat food.

@oscar__explosion said:

Thank you! That's what I thought this thread was going to be about. Like why didn't Nickelodeon make a cartoon about conjoined people. My first thought was Arnold from Hey Arnold and his black friend Gerald.

@pandabear said:

@oscar__explosion said:

Thank you! That's what I thought this thread was going to be about. Like why didn't Nickelodeon make a cartoon about conjoined people. My first thought was Arnold from Hey Arnold and his black friend Gerald.

I'm more surprised the fact that it took somebody two hours of this thread being up to post that image.

Real talk; if they could make a flavourless paste that required little to no preparation, could completely substitute a healthy diet and came at an affordable cost, then I could probably eat that for the rest of my life.

Because fuck cooking.

I'll add the same bit I did in the Tested article about that Soylent stuff. The human body does not need the exact same mixture of nutrients, fat, protein, etc at all times during the day. An optimal diet has different stuff as the body needs it, depending on the time and the activities the person is doing.

It's called food

Isn't that what baby food is?

@oscar__explosion said:

Man, that's what I thought of when I read the title! lol

Everything I'm about to say is totally made up, and I thought of it just now. Maybe it's right but, y'know, probably not.

I think a problem, and this extends to the herbivore/omnivore debate for human diet, is that I don't think we have much data on "wild" humans. Every single group of people on this planet has evolved with some form of culture or another and is influenced by everything around them. Nobody is 100% sure what we need. The only way we'd know what is right is to breed a human, put them in a biodome with no human contact ever and see what they chose to eat when given multiple choices. Or maybe that wouldn't work because we're programmed to rely on out socialization? I don't know.We have no idea what's "right" because we inhabit every corner of this planet, and the range of food we eat is so drastic. Put a cat in a room with a mouse and a mixed green salad and the cat will eat the mouse. Put a human in a room with a Quesadilla Explosion Salad from Chili's and a BBQ chicken pizza and, well, your answer will differ based on a lot of criteria. Also people complain more than animals. For all we know dogs can live to 35 years, but the food we feed them is killing them quicker. When food kills people it's more obvious, and we yell about it, so coming up with a solution isn't as easy.

Also I agree with @funkasaurasrex. 100%

Just remember everyone, Soylent Green still is people. Apart from collection purposes, do not open your eBay purchased cans of Soylent Green and eat them as they are a health and moral hazard.

There is, it's called Taco Bell.

http://freakonomics.com/2006/06/05/the-monkey-chow-diet/

@galacticgravy: There in fact are some groups of 'wild humans' around, shown in the documentary The Uncontacted Tribes. The jungles in New Guinea are pretty thick, they found this tribe of people that have been living their lives apparently unaware of the existence of the outside world.

I think you'd find the same thing with them you find with other cultures; their staple foods will be whatever their environment is most suited to growing, and they will have developed culture that is best suited to the continued harvesting of this food source. Hunter cultures were nomads, and their cultural and technological advances were those that were best suited to exploiting their food sources; river cities develop fishing, farming, trade, and their culture and technology develops to make them better suited to exploiting their food sources. For instance, China's very organized, very top-down cultural tendencies can be traced back to what traditions made them best suited for growing mass quantities of rice. More individualistic Western European cultural tendencies can be traced back to what best suited agrarian frontier living. Cultures that dealt with migratory food sources developed in ways to best exploit migrating animals, the Central Asian steppe tribes were always superior riders to the river-based Mediterranean nations, because their environment selected out unnecessary cultural development.

@brodehouse: That's what I mean, that even indigenous, untouched people have traditions that maybe influence their decisions on what to eat. By "wild" I mean one person living in the wilderness without another person tainting their eating habits. But again, who knows if what they eat is "right" for a pure human diet or not.

You hatsune-freakus...

Because real food taste fucking amazing? People say there are only three true pleasures in life; sex, sleep and food. Do you want to take one of them away? I will fight in wars for that shit.

It exists: http://www.onesquaremeal.com/

It's basically Human Chow.

@galacticgravy:Remember that in the wild most animals live on a diet of "what they can get", rather than what's theoretically best for them. Of course, in millions and millions of years animals evolve and adapt to the foods they can get hold of, but it's not a clean-cut thing - I think that's one of the reasons that animals in captivity live so much longer than their wild counterparts. Living in the wild is kind of unpleasant.

IT'S CALLED YO MAMA'S TITTIES.

Scrapple is probably the only thing I made that made me feel like I was preparing animal food for myself. I know that's not what you meant but still.... Scrapple man.

Basically because the human brain is more complex than a cat brain. Our brains need near constant stimulation (that's why we're on a video game website right now) because we evolved really big brains really fast and became really great at meeting our needs for survival quickly. So now we need stuff to be different every so often to keep ourselves from becoming depressed, bored, or crazy.

If you eat the same thing everyday, you'll likely get tired of it or you might even get sick if this hypothetical Bachelor Chow doesn't contain every possible thing we are likely to digest regularly.

I once ate some dog food on a drunk dare. It wasn't that bad. I got 50 bucks too. Pretty good night!

I'm going to off on a limb here and say that our diets are a little more complex than that of a domesticated animal. Interesting thought process, though. Food, for me, is something of an entertainment as much as it is a necessity. I hate cooking, never really do it, so trying new things and tasting old favorites is more of a pastime than it is for nutrition. For example, whenever I lay down to watch a movie, I almost need a snack in order to fully enjoy the film. I rarely even think about eating throughout the day unless its tied to some activity.

What I was trying to say is that I don't think I would be able to transition to a "cat-food" -like food simply because of the boredom that would ensure from consuming it. Maybe if I was raised on it and "gourmet" foods were scarce, could I see that being different. Fun topic for 3am!

There is. It's called pizza rolls.

Penn's Sunday School anyone?

Not so fast. Cats are carnivorous meaning they eat only meat.

Personally, though, I do expect humans can live on the same food and over and over but it's probably better to have a regimen of 2-4 different foods rather than just one. I've actually been experimenting with this myself since I can't be arsed to (nor can I afford) eating a variety of foods. I've also been inspired by the food pyramid, the Disney movie Aladdin, vegans, raw fooders, and the article about that girl who eats nothing but instant ramen. Doctor says she's frail and extremely unhealthy, but at least now I don't have to worry about becoming like her, provided I eat some vegetables and/or canned fruit now and then.

There are some "products" out there that are designed to be that, but nobody has done a good study to determine if you can subsist on those products indefinitely.

One of the reasons we don't "have" a simple, all-in-one product like cats and dogs, is due to the fact that such a product would, honestly, taste pretty bad. It would be difficult to make the product taste nice, especially if you wanted it in a dry, long-lasting form like dog food or cat food. Plus, humans would get very quickly bored of it.

Sorry for taking the thread to a dark place, but you could theoretically just eat the same thing day out and day in. You would probably feel like shit after a while and get loads of health problems, but you also have to remember that our standards for living makes it so we expect humans to live way longer than we would naturally if we didn't "pamper" ourselves. So ye, that's what people are doing to their pets, giving them shitty food because they're ok with their pets not living unnaturally long lives.

(on a more realistic note, their species are probably better evolved to have a less varied diet as most animals doesn't really have that much of a choice in what to eat.)

My diet might be more varied than one single type of canned food, but it's still not nearly as out there as most because that way it's just easier keeping track of how much I'm taking in. I even try to shake things up with my cat with vastly different flavors and brands. Maybe if it made monetary sense to buy the live diet that a feral cat might eat day-to-day, but I'm also a mouse/rat lover, so....

As others have pointed out, there are options. None of them perfect or entirely sensible. It's difficult to pack everything the human has come to need into one type of food product, plus dietary variety is just plain fun (though also the downfall of some people who overindulge).

because we have hands and can make real food.

humans do have something that is similar to dog and cat food. it's called MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat). they'll give you terrible constipation if you eat the stuff within the packaging without drinking enough water. you can pick up MRE's at almost any military surplus store.

Short answer: because there's no money in something like that that could keep us actually healthy.

Long answer: there is but you aren't gonna have it advertised to you. Basically you gotta look for it.

theres something called soylent. its like a paste that you eat and it has all the nutrients youll ever need.

edit: i see someone answered this earlier with a link to it.

It's called Ramen...