Is Pet Food Fit For Human Consumption?

Yes, humans can technically eat pet food, and a small taste of dog or cat food won’t poison you. But pet food is held to lower safety standards than human food, it can occasionally carry contaminants, and it has the wrong balance of protein, fat and carbohydrates for people. So it’s a poor thing to live off.

If you live with a pet, then this question must have surely crossed your mind at least once. I mean, aren’t you curious about pet food? What does it taste like? What is it about pet food that can instantly summon your pet, even if they’re miles away?

Most of the time, you’re left staring curiously at the bowl of food that your pet is ravenously munching on, contemplating what it might taste like. However, the wiser part of you probably just says, “Nah… maybe let’s not try to do that.” Who knows what would happen to your body if you ate it? You wouldn’t want to take the risk, right?

Well, fortunately for you, I’ll try to answer this question for you. Is it really okay for us to eat pet food?

Ingredients

If you look at the contents of the pet food packet that you have, you would quickly realize that most of them contain much of your own diet! There are ingredients like meat, wheat, rice and vegetables, all of which makes you think, maybe it wouldn’t be that bad to consume such a product. Moreover, the food also has added vitamins and minerals for even better health!

However, you don’t necessarily know the origin of the meat used in pet food. Most of it comes from parts that are not destined for the human plate. It is usually made up of meat by-products and slaughterhouse leftovers, such as organs and blood, along with offal and connective tissue (cheap, low-grade filler). Trust me when I say, nothing good is going to come out of eating ground-up animal bones or organs, like the intestines.

So no, there is nothing poisonous about pet food that could put you in your death bed. The ingredients in themselves are not particularly harmful to your body, but that doesn’t mean that it would be good for your body. You have a serious chance of falling ill by eating unprocessed meat that your body isn’t accustomed to.

Quality Control

The main reason why you should avoid making a meal of pet food is that it isn’t held to the same standard as the human food that lands on your plate. Don’t get me wrong, pet food is regulated. In the United States, the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act requires all animal food, just like human food, to be safe to eat, made under sanitary conditions and free of harmful substances. The catch is how high the bar sits. Food meant for people goes through stricter inspection, and in the case of meat, USDA oversight, which is what keeps consumers safe from food-borne bugs such as Salmonella.

Pet food, on the other hand, doesn’t have to clear that higher bar. The FDA doesn’t pre-approve a bag of kibble before it reaches the shelf, and pet food is allowed to use animal parts and by-products that would never be cleared for your dinner. So while it has to be safe enough for your pet, it simply isn’t built to the standard set for the food on your own plate.

For example, on March 16, 2007, the Canadian manufacturer Menu Foods issued a major recall of canned pet food that was causing rapid kidney failure in cats and dogs across North America. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration soon traced the problem to wheat gluten imported from China. Wheat gluten on its own is perfectly safe to eat, but this batch had been spiked with melamine, a nitrogen-rich industrial chemical normally used to make plastics, laminates and flame retardants. Because melamine is loaded with nitrogen, adding it fooled protein tests into reading the watered-down gluten as higher quality than it really was. On its own, melamine is only mildly toxic, but when it pairs up with cyanuric acid (a related contaminant found in the same shipments), the two form insoluble crystals that lodge in the kidneys and can block them entirely. The U.S. death toll was never pinned down precisely, but reports to the FDA pointed to thousands of cats and dogs.

Worryingly, the same trick later turned up in food meant for people. In 2008, melamine was added to infant formula in China to fake its protein content, sickening an estimated 300,000 babies and hospitalizing more than 50,000 of them with kidney stones and kidney damage. So no, melamine is not a harmless additive that merely upsets your stomach.

Improper Diet

Needless to say, the food proportions for humans are completely different from those required by animals. Although the ingredients in pet food (proteins, fats and carbohydrates) are much the same, their quantities differ in human food. Cats and dogs also don’t eat the way we do. Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning they truly need meat to survive, while dogs are omnivores that lean heavily on animal protein but can handle plenty of plant matter too. We humans run on a carbohydrate-rich diet, whereas their food is built around far more protein and fat. It would be a mistake on our part if we tried to consume only pet food for long stretches of time. It wouldn’t kill you, but it would leave you pretty unhealthy by the end of it.

Pet food is safe if you eat just a little bit once or twice in your life. Therefore, if you have, possibly due to a drunken mistake, challenged a friend to eat pet food, don’t worry, your friend is in no immediate danger of dying. However, please don’t try to live off the stuff! It is of the wrong quality and quantity for human nutrition. It’s definitely wiser for you to stick to plain old boring people food instead!