Hello All,
It all started with a conversation about designer puppy chow. Someone mentioned that there were brands of dog and cat food that were actually only out of date human food. Someone else said that they had eaten some cat food and thought it better than your average chunk light tuna. It spiraled from there.
For my preparations, I have vacuum-packed a few large bags of dog food for my very small dog (probably a good 2 months worth). If it came down to it, could that be considered human food? I can’t imagine it would taste very good, but it would beat starving. Would you eat dog food to stay alive?
How would you prepare it? (I was thinking a sort of mush cooked in boiling water)
Which brand would you pick?
Thanks.
M

Back years ago when I was a den leader in Cub Scouts, some used to recommend taking dog bone treats in your backpack for emergency survival food. The thinking being, the scouts would probably eat anything remotely edible without saving it for emergency use. Dog bones are probably not considered "remotely edible" unless you're in the middle of an emergency (except to dogs, of course!) I never choked one down myself, but assume they wouldn't kill you if you ate one.

I stock Purina Puppy Chow in our hunting trailer. I put it in clean 7 gallon drywall bucket. I added a small piece of dry ice wrapped in a rag to evacuate the oxygen. The dog food seems to last forever.

I have a small baggy of it in my hunting pack. We call it Redneck Trail Mix.

Our hunting camp predicts I will be killed by a truck while crossing a highway when I stop to lick myself. (Bad Joke)

Take the ingredients label to a nutritionist/ food doctor and see what they say.

I'd make sure to take plenty of red pepper flakes and seasoned salt with me to "make it taste better". A little self-deception goes a long way.

I doubt any company or professional person would recommend pet food as safe, even if they believed it was. Imagine the liability issues, loss of license, or being publicly pilloried by the media on a slow news day.

You could frame it this way: "Doc, I accidentally ate a few handfuls of puppy chow, thought it was trail mix, here's the label, is this dangerous to my health?"

I'd be cautious about the pet food thing. My dogs and cats find and eat all sorts of stuff that would make me extremely ill. Clearly their digestive systems are a lot tougher than mine, and they're able to deal with pathogens that would knock me flat.

However, if I was genuinely starving, I would eat pet food.

Quote from 'The Art of Travel' by Francis Galton



Just to put the question into perspective, really it is not a difficult question to answer.

I didn't even think of the legal/liability aspect. I would never ask them for their approval or recommendation. I think the "OOPS" approach is pretty good though. It would let us know what ingredients could be harmful.

By the by, pet food labels are alot more easy to read than human food labels. Less 27-syllable chemical names.

Back in my younger leaner days, hitching around the country, I found Gaines Burgers to be sufficient to get me through the tough stretches.

On the psychological side, they are easy to imagine as hamburger steak!!!

I suspect recommending that, after you eat up all of his/her food, you might as well eat fido too (to prevent its starving to death) would be in bad taste (no pun intended)...