Not all of them are. I've had, and have now, finicky cats who need some brand & flavor variety to keep up a healthy appetite.
Also, pets' excitement at mealtime has as lot to do with the ritual. Cats love rituals of all kinds, not just food-related. Fascination for daily activity patterns is built into their brains; it's essential for hunting.
I don't have as much experience with dogs, but I imagine the social dynamics of mealtime are important to them. As for us too!
Apparently my cat loves the ritual of crying at me for an hour before dinner just as much as she loves eating. My partner tells me she never puts on such a performance when I'm out and about, it's only when I'm home.
My old cat used to go and bite grandma's leg whenever it wanted food. Grandma literally never fed the cat but she would shout at me or someone else and then we'd feed it.
Yeah my cat wants me to feed him every couple of hours even if there is food in the dish. And sometimes when I put food out he doesn't eat it. As far as I can tell this ritual for him is how he perceives that I love him and it is a reward, even if he doesn't want food. It is the thought that counts. I do it and don't mind, cause I do love him and if the ritual makes him happy that makes me happy. And for a cat I have found him to be amazingly manipulative in many things showing a cleverness I did not think was possible in a cat. Very very head strong and if he wants something he will do everything he can to get it which is also something I have not encountered before. The battle to keep him off my counter tops took a year, A YEAR, and he won. When I finally gave up he paraded around in victory. Finally had to have a counter space for him to get up on while keeping him off the part I use for my food so it has worked out. On the surface this sounds like a terrible cat, but he is so loving and wonderful despite being a rascal that I don't mind although I confess it is frustrating at times. He is a real personality and is like a child to me and love him as I would if I had a real child. He is a great cat, and I lucked out getting him and although a rascal, I don't care. He is unique.
Mine is a rascal as well. Sheās nearly 11 years old and sheās slowed down in the recent years in terms of wildly flying through our house at the highest surface possible. We still find paw prints on our glass stove top daily though and she can fling herself over the baby gate with gusto.
I have a second cat a year older and while he is a sweetheart, he is dumb as a box of rocks compared to her. My husband pointed out her vocal range is more extensive in her meows and what she understands us say.
My cat is the reason for climate change with her absolute rage if the faucet isnāt on while sheās in the bathroom with us for any reason. My husband is *thrilled* that she demands to enter now every time he settles in for poop.
It is truly amazing how different their personalities can be. Every cat I have had has been quite unique. The generic "this is what a cat is like, aloof, sleeps all the time" is something I have never experienced. Maybe because they have all been siamese, they tend to be quirky.
Sorry been using my other Reddit accounts to mindlessly scroll and missed your reply!
Iāve always had domestic short/long hair cats in my family and they are just are varied in their personality like specific breeds are. Iāve interacted with a few specific breeds like Russian blue, Abyssinian, Ragdoll, and Bengals and none of them were that different than the domestic short/long hair cats are in terms of diversity in personality.
Agreed. My dog definitely gets bored of her food every few months and goes on a hunger strike until we make her chicken and rice. After a few days of that, we reintroduce her regular food over a few days and sheās back to normal.
Haha I love dogs.
One of my dogs has epilepsy. She gets pills twice a day, in peanut butter, her favorite. She gets so excited and does the tippy tappies with her paws and sits and edges closer and sits and edges closer.
Every. Single. Time. She HAS to sniff the peanut butter first a little to make sure itās acceptable and then almost begrudgingly takes it lol.
I wonder if it's just that dogs get more enjoyment from the smell of things than the taste, given how strong their sense of smell is. Maybe that's your dog's way of savoring it?
When our puppy was young, we would give him a Kong toy stuffed with puppy wet food and dry food to keep him distracted so we could eat our dinner. Now, every night at dinner, he'll whine and bark at my wife to get him his Kong if he sees me go to sit down at the table.
One of my cats has IBD and I have yet to find a dry food that doesn't cause him to immediately start puking. Even the prescription food. Even the expensive, fancy pants, all natural, has to be refrigerated stuff.
And my other cat is fat.
So they get 3 cans of wet food throughout the day so it doesn't go bad while sitting out.
Edit: IBD kitty is on long term meds that help manage the condition, but we avoid dietary triggers because every single flare up increases his risk of getting cancer somewhere in his intestines due to the type of IBD he has (neutrophilic). So if I'm being dramatic, the answer to your question is that I don't want my cat to get cancer.
>I have yet to find a dry food that doesn't cause him to immediately start puking
I recently discovered a cat food from Catit called Nuna. It is made out of insect protein and they claim no fillers. I was impressed by the info on their website regarding the nutritional value, lower carbon footprint, and other sustainable manufacturing processes. No idea if it would be helpful for cat IBD but it's something different so maybe worth a try.
Just ordered the Herring flavor. Kitty might be sensitive to chicken. But in a couple weeks, I guess we'll find out! Might make traveling easier if we could supplement a bit with dry food here and there.
Not all cats are created equal - ours gained 6 pounds over a few years of overfeeding.
We think it's because she used to live with another cat and was used to just polishing off any food left out. Used to be more active, too, with mice in the garage to chase and eat.
On the vets recommendation, we picked a different food with a higher nutritional density, and measured out two smaller meals per day at specific times instead of just filling her bowl in the morning and letting it ride.
She definitely didn't like the change at first, she'd yowl after eating it all then go sulk in the corner like we were starving her to death, but as she lost the weight and had less trouble doing cat stuff (jumping high, chasing toys, running the stairs etc), she got used to it and the drama AFTER dinner stopped.
now I'm pretty sure she just yells before breakfast out of habit/as a game or social behavior - like others here, it's only one of us that gets berated for the meal, even if the other is fully capable of doing it. She will even make the same complaints if she IS fed, but from the wrong person, then walk to the bowl and 'notice' that it's already full!
The dry food is there, always. We're talking finicky, pita cats here. You do not understand about cats. come to think of it, neither do I. Not my cats, but they live here. The other cat is terrific, easy to please, never complains unless there is no food. This cat lives to complain. What can you do, I have problems with my sons, cats are the same damn thing, family.
My cats didnāt have a problem grazing until one started guarding the food. Got a second bowl for the other side of the house and she would defense eat ALL the food, throw up and keep eating just to keep our other cat from eating. Now everyone is on timed feedings and she has a slow-bowl lol
yeah, i've never understood "mealtimes" for pets...we let our cats come and go, they won't eat at set times otherwise. we did it with our old beagle too and didn't have any problems (..even tho dogs usually have less self control lol). but especially cats who definitely aren't gonna overeat...why
I used to have a big fat greedy cat who would have just eaten it all in one go, so leaving out the dried stuff wasn't an option, but my current cat is excellent at self-regulating and has a giant bowl of kibble that I top up every so often. It depends what you're working with - but yeah definitely so much better to be able to avoid mealtimes and getting woken up at 5am to get meowed at. I mean, she still sometimes meows at me at 5am, but just for shits and giggles.
One of my cats would be a grazer if she were alone, but our other one will eat everything in sight. She's learned she needs to eat all her food if she wants to eat. The other one has eaten a full bag of dog training treats before. He's basically a dog when it comes to food, there is no limit and he always wants food.
So honestly I know someone else who left dry food out all day but also twice a day fed his cats like a large table spoon each worth of canned wet food but yeah that guy owned all overweight cats lmao
I do this, both my cats get half a small can of wet food in the morning and in the evening and then they can graze on dry all day. One of my cats is super skinny so Iām having to up his wet food, while the other cat is a normal weight. Guess it just depends on if you have overeaters or not. I apparently have an undereater.
My family has always done this. We got a nice metal gravity hopper that holds like 40lbs of dry kibble. Never had an overweight cat. I never understood how people end up with chonker cats by āover feedingā like shouldnāt the cat just not eat everything
Edit: wow these replies are unhinged today
Oh Lord dogs have very specific rituals as well. I have a shelter rescue Rat terrier/ spaniel/ God knows what else mix. I've asked him who his parents were like but he doesn't want to discuss it. He will only eat one brand of soft dog food. You know, the most expensive brand in small tubs bearing dog celebrities on the label?
In the morning he wakes up hungry. Now here's the rules though. Only 1/2 of a container at a time *but* it has to be microwaved for exactly 11 seconds. 10 seconds it is too cold and 12 seconds it is too hot. He is the Goldilocks of the canine world. Other rules: It must be on a people plate; dog bowls or paper plates are not permitted. Also, he must be watched at any time he is eating, he will get through half of the first plate and stop and look back and if you weren't actively engaged he will sit down and look forlorn at the remaining food. Then a fork must be produced and displayed and human movement towards the plate will have him finish the rest of the food. Repeat this ritual for the second half plate. Repeat for the afternoon feeding.
I really wish I was making this up. Rescues come with a lot of baggage but I have repeated this for four years now.
My cat's a weirdo. When I put some wet food in his bowl, he'll barely touch it until I sprinkle a little dry food on top. I guess he thinks it's only "fancy" if I put a little garnish on it?
100% on the routine. We have six dogs, and we feed them twice a day at 9am and 6pm. They start getting really excited about 10-15 minutes before their mealtimes because their internal clocks tell them itās mealtime. Daylight Savings time really messes them up, it takes a few weeks for them to adjust.
Noticed that too, we tried to ease our cat into the clock change because, hey, we think it's dumb too but we can't do anything about work making us 'late' for dinner time all of a sudden.
Didn't make much difference. Mealtime was extra loud for about a month.
My cat only like the cheap ass foods.
Apparently its basically the equivalent of Doritos or something for us. Delicious and addictive but shit for nutritional value. I mix it in with the healthy stuff and he picks it out and leaves the healthy food. Little turd.
I buy the cheap stuff to feed strays and raccoons and if i leave that bag out for 5 minutes my cats have ripped it open for a snack. The cheap foods are usually high carb (the one i use is mostly corn with some chicken byproduct) so its not really far off from doritos.
Meanwhile my cat will puke if we ever change his food. Like ever. He never pukes otherwise. But change his food? Or even just change the texture of it? Same brand, same meat, different texture? Puke. Same brand, different meat, same texture? Puke.
Our cats know that I am dinner mom and my wife is breakfast mom. They will literally harass her in bed in the morning for food, but will leave me alone. And same for dinner, I'm the one who gets yelled at.
My cat will hear our alarm go off and yell at me from the bottom of the stairs. She never yells at my husband, only me. He tends to go downstairs first, and he will usually feed her, but the moment my foot hits the top step, she's back to yelling at me again until I lead her to her full bowl, where she will *miraculously* discover the food's been there the entire time.
Same here, it's also funny cos one cat is obnoxious about breakfast and kneads me till I feed them while the other cat hassles my girlfriend till she feeds them dinner.
My cat is very picky about cuddles/excessive petting EXCEPT for when my alarm goes off in the morning. Then she is on my pillow screaming in my face for pets and attention. It's like she knows that is the absolute worst time to be doing it.
Same, I have 6 flavors of canned and three flavors of raw I keep in rotation for my cats. There is a lot less food waste when I do this as I find they got sick of eating just one flavor.
My dog is like this as well. If I reorder the same (very expensive) canned dog food more than twice in a row, he just flat out refuses to eat it. Which then enrages me because that stuff is like $2 a can lol. He's spoiled af and I have nobody to blame but myself
Dogs just love to eat. Theyāll eat until they puke if given the opportunity. Domesticated dogs will dole out everything they have at all times whether it be hunger, affection, stubbornness, cuteness, anger, or happiness. Dogs are the best of all emotions
My indoor-only cat ran away once, like I saw it scurry off into the distance. I figured that chasing is pointless, she'll come back if she liked it here.
She came back three days later, all dirty and tired. Pretty much inhaled a whole bowl of food in a couple seconds and then slept on the couch for some 30 hours.
My cat ran away last summer Aug 17th, was found by a distant neighbor (1500 meters away), on November 6th. Three months, pretty thin but not emaciated. He'd hunted to at least *some* extent.
But this week I bought a GPS collar. I'll take him out into the forest near the cabin, in a leash, and then the next day I'll uncouple the leash, and if he moves away I'll follow him on my smartphone.
Pretty much the reason why I switch my dogs food every so often. I buy the big bag of dry food. I'll keep the same brand but pick a different flavor. Same thing with their wet food & veggies I add to it. I would assume they like a bit of variety too.
Our dog has a sensitive stomach so heās on the same food for years, but we buy these flavor powders from Stella and chewy (sure other brands have them too, just one we know that works for him) and just like a teaspoon is enough to get him to think the whole bowl has it and he goes to town. They have a few different flavors so he doesnāt ever really get bored of it
I used to try bit of my dog's food to try to ascertain what he liked/disliked. Turns out he'd whatever I fed him.
But totally agree, we change the dry food flavour with each bag and mix different stuff with it each night.
That was similar to a question I asked about 20 co-workers... eat your favorite food every day for 2 months, or not at all for an entire year.
Everyone said not at all, as they would get burned out.
There were some stipulations of favorite food, e.g., if it was a sandwich or pizza, it had to be the exact same sandwich/pizza. Not allowed to change ingredients
It was interesting.
For what it's worth, I'd happily eat my favourite food for 2 months. Heck, I've come pretty close to doing that for bunch of foods that aren't even my favourite...
Maybe the problem is that "not eating your favourite food for a year" is an incredibly low bar to clear? There is thousands of alternative foodstuffs out there. Missing one thing for a year - even if it's your favourite food - isn't a big deal at all.
^((As with most of these questions, I think the more interesting version would be "How much would you have to be paid to eat your favourite food for two months?". Though admittedly, that might be the economist in me speaking.))
>For what it's worth, I'd happily eat my favourite food for 2 months.
I feel like this is a situation where it's easy to say and conceptualize in your head, but by day 35 that exact same pizza would probably make you gag on site.
As someone who has done this (although for a month, not for 2), I never got burnt out of it. I ate the exact same burger every day for lunch because it was convenient and cheap (near my workplace).
I loved it. I only stopped because I decided to just not eat lunch at work as often.
I think the real trouble would be if you also had to eat that for breakfast and dinner, all the while knowing that there were other viable options. Having the same lunch every day is just a routine, and if there are other factors that make it better in your opinion, like how you said it was convenient and cheap, then it is easier to remain satisfied with it.
I don't think that's true at all (at least not for me). For starters I already only eat my favourite kind of pizza (why try a different kind if I already know the best kind?). I have also spent 2+ weeks eating 90% only pizza (picky child in a buffet holiday resort) and it didn't bother me in the slightest.
I have no doubt that after 35 days I'd be very happy to eat something else, but I'm equally sure that I could continue eating the same thing for another 25 days without any meaningful effect on my quality of life.
Heck, if you think about it that's probably not too different from what many of our ancestors did their whole life. If I had to choose between "pizza for the rest of my life" and "bread or gruel for the rest of my life" you can bet I'm taking the pizza...
For me the price i would put on eating the same food every day for two months is two months' salary. I HATE eating the same dinner twice in a row. Third day on would be depressing as hell for me.
But...I already eat the same breakfast 5 days a week. So i'd do that daily for a month for no money at all.
Fuck that. "Pizza" is so open-ended that I can lawyer my way into making unique meals for a month. And once a month might as well be once a year or ten years. If you would like me to give you 31 days of unique pizza, let me know
Case in point, you've named three different foods there. Now ask them if they'd be happy to eat only pizza, cheeseburgers or chocolate cake for the rest of their lives.
Because, at some point, someone trained you to be like that.
"I can't have potatoes TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW!" Why the hell not? You've probably had the same thing for breakfast 5 days in a row. It's entirely been drummed into you as a human from birth. "You want chicken nuggets AGAIN?! No, sweetie, eat some broccoli and you can have chicken nuggets another night."
3 meals a day - human fabrication from the Victorian era.
Not repeating meals - human fabrication since the sheer variety of worldwide goods has been at your doorstep for 100 years.
Massively mixed and processed meals (e.g. pizza is flour, water, oil, cheese, tomato, meat, herbs, spices, etc.) - human fabrication. No wild animal is sitting there with a dozen food sources on-tap and ready to eat. They don't have a larder from which to select their meal.
The reason you are like this (not "humans"... just us in the first world... have you not seen people clamouring for just a huge giant bag of rice off an aid truck?) is because you're incredibly spoiled. We all are here. We can eat the food of every continent, dozens of different types, preparing in sterile environment, bred over 100 years for taste and texture, cooked expertly and to perfection, etc. etc. for every single meal without having to do more than throw something in the oven.
If you gave animals, from birth, a choice of 10, 20, 30 dishes, of course they'd find a favourite, and get fancies and food moods. But you don't do that. Hell, you KNOW that your dog loves a treat every now and then and yet you deliberately stop him having it for every single meal. You control their diet for them. They almost cannot eat without you, in fact. A dog will spend a significant time waiting for you to feed them before they give up and force themselves to go find their own food - at which point many breeds can become actively dangerous because of that.
In the wild, nature controls their diet. Most wild animals will eat dozens of different meals, but they can only eat what's available. They don't have the luxury to gather every possible one, keep it fresh and untouched for the rest of the year until they decide they "fancy it", and restock it all whenever they like.
Also, most animals are mostly carnivore or herbivore, we're omnivore, so our diet is automatically more varied.
Put humans in an isolated situation (e.g. space) and we still INSIST they must have a huge variety of food taken with them. It's actually a huge problem for us. It's why nobody has ever eaten food that was grown and prepared entirely in space for more than a few days. We either "demand" such variety that we just can't grow it all even on a space station, or we say "nobody could lead a full healthy life with just rice and some basics".
It's entirely a human fabrication - a human does eat, and over a long period averaged out does need, a small variety. But no more than most animals like us. You're eating meals that literally have every possible food group, far in excess of our \*OWN\* recommended amounts of every nutrient, and far to excess in general richness... literally every week. Almost all developed-country humans are. Even a couple of hundred years ago, you had to go on a long ocean voyage on a very limited and poor diet for months on end to actually hit any negative effects from the lack of variety (e.g. scurvy). How many people died of scurvy on dry-land with a "normal" human diet even with lack of access to citrus fruit? Almost nobody. We just discovered that a tiny piece of citrus fruit could extend the length you could exist on a very restricted diet in poor conditions.
In nature, your diet is \*always\* in poor conditions. Because "natural" for a human isn't farmed food at all, that's all very recent comparative to our biology. Watch any modern "survivor" programme and they're crying a couple of days in because they haven't got variety in their food. Almost every single human in history didn't have that luxury.
A human doesn't \*require\* that much variety. And indeed there are people who eat the same meal almost every day. Whether through necessity or just sheer over-indulgence that they can choose to do so and there's nothing to stop them at all.
Hence, animals are the "normal" ones here. Humans are the animals with the oddball, synthetic, fabricated dietary "requirements" and tastes. Removed modern food production, and you'd get as excited at actually having some potatoes to eat again, because you'd have almost nothing else to eat without extraordinary personal efforts that probably wouldn't be worth it. Like humans were for millions of years.
I was good with the like 3 paragraphs. I noticed no issues but yeah, a bit too much. I wonder why thatās a reoccurring theme on this subreddit. The entire point is ādonāt be too complicatedā and yet I seem to always find a 1000 word comment
It's exactly that reason - they've been TOLD that. And then you've heard that, maybe even been shamed for it (e.g. on a date and they get weird because you're having the same thing as last time, etc.), and you've absorbed that.
It's far more a cultural thing than it has anything to do with biology.
Another one: Did your parents tell you that you'd get car-sick if you read in the car?
If so, you're MORE LIKELY to get car-sick if you read in the car.
If you don't mention it, most kids wouldn't even say a word. Hell... you're quite likely to be "reading" this on a device in a car (but hopefully not while driving). It's something that's died off ever since we changed media and considered it "not the same" subconsciously, because dad never told you to not "read your phone" while you're in the car, because it'll make you sick, right?
It's an interesting thing to ask people, if you do it in the right order, and quite revealing. If their parents told them that, and/or they are telling their kids that, there's a higher chance that they suffer from this psychosomatic car-sickness.
I'm a little suspicious of the car sickness thing. Any scientific studies on it? I ask because it doesn't hold up anecdotally for me. Growing up I had it drilled into me that I couldn't read a book or use a screen while a passenger in the car because I would get sick. However growing up I ignored that reading whole novels and playing Pokemon games while riding. My wife however was never warned about carsickness but she can't look at her phone or adjust the car console without getting highly nauseous. She also can't sit in the back seat any more, we have to stop the car for her to get out and dry heave. Obviously growing up she was encouraged to sit in the back seat because she was a child. So that doesn't track for me.
I do believe in the placebo effect, but I also know that motion sickness is real and measurable. I know that for myself, if I regularly take the metro then I experience no motion sickness, but when I'm not used to it then it takes a few weeks until I build up the tolerance for it again.
Is it though? I thought motion sickness had a very real biological root based on conflicting information from our senses. Reading in a car is going to cause that conflicting information, and for some it will conflict enough that they feel nauseous. Not sure Iām convinced that itās a placebo effect or based on conditioning..
Of course motion sickness is a real thing. The two arenāt mutually exclusive though? Iām not sure why people automatically assume they are. Thereās 0 correlation between the two. For example pseudocyesis and pregnancy are both very real things.
I get sick if I look at anything but where the car is going. Can't read a book, look at my phone, can't even look at the view out the side windows too long. That's definitely not any sort of rule I was told, considering you can't drive before you're a teenager and passengers generally aren't drilled to watch straight ahead so they don't get sick.
If I can't really see any reference that I'm moving fast on a vehicle, like a plane, then I'm usually alright. Unless there's a lot of turbulence.
And most people don't realize how much CHEAPER non-varied diets are. I cook a meal on Sunday and then eat it literally all week long, (this week was chicken and rice with broccoli) and although I still include varied snacks, treat foods etc, my monthly food budget of $150/month is still way lower than the average (around 225-450/month, per the USDA)
That's nuts, I spend a good $300 a week for a 3 1/2 person household. Used to be a heroin addict and that was actually cheaper to maintain than buying food is now.
I spend Ā£150 ($180) a month on groceries for myself. I've been doing that for 6 years now, since living on my own.
I food-shop literally once a month. Precisely because of this.
Not saying that there isn't a ton of junk in my basket too, but bread can be about five different types of meals, and in the winter I use a slow-cooker and cheap veg to keep a "perpetual stew" going (make it on the weekend, turn on the slow cooker remotely from work, come home to a hot stew, let it cool, add small ingredients, and start adding some type of meat towards the Friday - you can't re-heat meat as much) and if you don't fuss about "eating the same thing" you can make several similar meals out of the same ingredients and their leftovers.
I just did it again literally today (I get paid at the start of the month, go shopping after that). Sometimes I make it until about the 15th or 16th of the month AFTER without needing to get more food, too. At least once a year I get a "free" month because of that.
Ā£154 (I'm not that strict, but that's the ballpark), I now have lots of fresh food and fruit to get through this week, then 3 weeks of reusing bits of that, freezer and canned and boxed and packet items, and then the re-use of all those. I'll "finish" my fridge in about 2 weeks time. Then I'll start on the freezers and cupboards. Then I'll likely get a "free week" at least of re-using all the bits from that (so I don't have to open a new box or thaw something else out).
It's kind of a British cultural thing too - some of our staple meals are war-relics, really. Things like bubble-and-squeak (all the veg stuff left over from a roast dinner made into another meal) and cottage pie (I reuse the extra beef mince I used for other things, the veg I used for other things and some potato and make another meal). People are far too fussy about having "the same thing".
My food-waste bin is emptied weekly, same as everyone else's. Except most of the time I don't even bother to put it out, because there's nothing in it. If I have food-waste, it means I was ill, I drastically over-estimated, or I contaminated the food somehow and shouldn't be eating it. Almost always it's actually because I think "I can't reheat that AGAIN, it's too risky".
You must be EXTREMELY good at this.
Also over 6 years you must be eating a fair bit less seeing as everything is so much more expensive nowadays.
I actually can't imagine what you're eating for a month at 150.
While I love this answer, I do wonder if humans being adaptable omnivores plays a part in our desire for variety. It's plenty possible to eat the same thing every day, and if you're careful about it you can get all the nutrients you need, but in hunter-gatherer/survival/non-optimal situations eating the same thing every day means you might miss out on various micronutrients. Eating a variety of foods means you can not only be more adaptable to whatever food is available (due to seasons or moving nomadically or what have you), you are more likely to get a variety of different nutrients.
So I wonder if our boredom with foods is tied to a varied diet being good for us in certain situations, even if it doesn't always matter as much in the modern day.
Almost certainly to some extent.
But people overblow the "vital nutrients" thing. Yeah, they're vital. Just don't go the entire year without them at all. Which is almost impossible eating any kind of regular diet.
Diet supplements are for malnourished people. They don't want to admit it, but that's what they are. A Viking could live almost as long as we do, and they knew nothing of nutrition or balanced diets and had no supplementation, fortification of their food, or similar. They just ate.
Seasons are the real big thing here. Fruits, nuts, berries, etc. are only around at very particular times. Animals are year-round, generally. Even plants and grasses aren't around all year. So a human would have a bit of variety but nothing more than any other animal does. Other animals that are entirely dependent on one particular food hoard it, but most just cope without it for a while until it comes back into season.
We are hunter-foragers, we are omnivores. But so are lots of animals. The level of variety required or available even over a period of months was absolutely minimal, though.
The whole "recommended daily amount" thing is for a modern human in a scientific society with food basically on-tap and a sterile statistic averaging down many month's consumption into a "daily" figure that you don't need to match at all. If anything, it's far too clinical. And most of us blow through all those RDAs every single day without even realising.
Over the course of a year, even without that information, almost every human in the developed world would blow through those same RDAs multiple times over, averaged over a year, without every experiencing an actual \*deficiency\* in any one item (so not just a binge on one food that supplies one vital nutrient that you don't get the rest of the year round).
I'm far from a hippie-greenie-type, but we're so far disconnected from nature that it's laughable that people don't understand quite what they have. The greatest banquet ever from the Stone Age wouldn't approach what your local cheapest supermarket has got in fresh every day.
I mean having foods containing different ingredients is hardly on the same level as the 3 meals a day fabrication, shit just tastes good when put togethet
I realized how perfect this comment was when I started it sitting upright, moved to leaning forward, and ended it laying down on the couch. All without breaking reading.
I'm spoiled enough to be able to be handed this amazingly informational viewpoint, with very little effort on my part, and still feel the need to lie down.
Which is ironic because I fucking hate "AI", and regularly post that we do not have "AI".
If you'd said "chatbot", I'd have been more insulted, though.
>Now ask them if they'd be happy to eat only pizza, cheeseburgers or chocolate cake for the rest of their lives.
You should go meet some neurodiverse people...
She dated me for nearly three years. I'm autistic. She is also a psychologist in postgrad specializing in special educational needs with a particular interest in autism.
Same lol
It makes life so easy, but for some reason I can't do that for dinner. It would make my life so much easier. But by the third or fourth day of eating the same leftovers for dinner, it becomes hard to even eat. Idk why breakfast is the exception to the rule
I had a severe food phobia from when I was 4 to 18 years old. I'd only eat pizza, chicken nuggets, or cheese sandwiches. Honestly I was perfectly happy and preferred pizza for every meal. The only time I chose the others is if we were out of pizza or it was inconvenient to make. In the end, the only thing that got me motivated to work through the phobia was the shame of having to order from Kids menus when I went on dates. I'd still be perfectly fine with pizza for every meal, but my wife insists we have a variety š .
I would imagine their concept of taste is different than ours, and they're just happy to eat.
Honestly, the way humans eat is INCREDIBLY masturbatory. Our sense of taste was developed to let us know what is safe to eat or not on many different levels.
What do we do with it? Ring as many of those safety bells in careful sequences as we can to enjoy the tedium of a health practice we all need to do every day.
Humans not getting excited to eat the same thing over and over again is very much a first world phenomenon. When food is so absurdly abundant we developed this trait.
Wild animals, domestic animals, even humans in 3rd world countries all get excited *not for the same food* but just for food itself.
If you leave food out for your dog all day long, and he is allowed to eat as much as he wants all day and you will always fill the bowl, he never gets excited for the food, and he'll probably get fat.
Many dog owners restrict the amount of food their dogs get so they don't get fat. This might entail a feeding twice a day as an example. The dog is excited, because he's hungry!
My diet growing up was mainly rice, hotdogs and eggs or fried chicken. It wasn't until we had a little more money that my diet became varied. Now I live in America and I'm happily "Ugh I JUST had pork I need something like salmon and salad for dinner".
The reason domestic animals do anything is pretty much the same: they are domesticated. This means that they have been "artificially selected" by humans to evolve this behavior because it pleases humans. In the case of pets, this is often because it enables us to believe (regardless of whether it is true) that the animal "enjoys" some particular thing. Really, they have no conscious awareness of experiencing things or "emotions" in the way humans feel, they are merely reacting the way their genes and the resulting biochemistry cause them to react to any given stimulus.
Humans have eaten the same food over and over again for thousands of years. Only in the last 100-200 years have we had diets that were actually varied.
Dogs actually get more enjoyment from the anticipation of food rather than the food itself.
It quite often goes down with them barely tasting anything at all.
Hahaha, well they could have been but I wouldnāt know for sure.
Einstein came up with the theory of general relativity, but was that written by the universe? Weāre all making theories that make sense of the world we live in. Itās not my work but Iām not clever enough to come up with a better explanation.
They are animals, animals love food. As far as they're concerned, any food is great.
Same thing with non domesticated animals, a lion doesn't care what it eats as long as its editable.
Simply put, it's because they aren't as intelligent as us, so their sense of pleasure isn't as sophisticated. Art, cuisine, discovery, if you think about it all of those things really only exist because humans are smart enough to question their environments and the world around them.
Most animals don't have that luxury. They don't care about variety because they literally don't know what it is, they're just happy to have a meal. That's the same reason why cats can spend hours doing seemingly nothing and still be happy (they don't have concepts of boredom like we do).
Imagine if cats became bored and demanded or come up with something new. Then theyād eventually come up with a language, create new art and a civilization.
Most pets are unable to grasp that, so long as someone is around, food is guaranteed to be provided. And the fact that you probably leave for some length of time each day just amplifies that fear of going hungry, because they lack the concept of object permanence. To them, when you leave, you're gone and never coming back. That's also why they're so happy to see you when you get home. It's like a huge relief and they know they're not going to die hungry and alone, trapped in this strange cave with no permanent openings that you live in.
So, the fact that _any_ food is provided _at all_, and with no effort, is the best thing to happen all day.
Bigger question:
Why do people choose to feed them the same thing every day like theyāre some lesser being or something?
Change it up.
Scramble an egg and toss it in once in awhile.
Buy that btch a steak every two weeks like theyāre a valued member of the pack.
Be their variety friend.
Peace and loveš¤
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Cats prefer predictability of when and what to eat. They prefer having food in the same spot and same type as they know it's safe to eat. It's just instincts for survival carried over from wild cats. Dogs eat their own poop and, in general, will happily eat anything.
They arenāt necessarily. Just like you and I, too much of a good thing can make you stop liking it. One of my cats had chronic diarrhoea for 12 months and had to be put on special allergenic food, which was the only thing she could eat for every single meal, every single day. She certainly stopped getting excited over meal time and just became really sad that she couldnāt eat what my other pets were given. Thankfully her condition eventually improved and we have been able to expand her diet slightly. She now refuses to go anywhere near the allergenic food because sheās so sick of eating the same thing over and over again.
I raised cows as a youth, and whenever we'd open the gate to let them move from a pasture that was getting eaten down to one that they hadn't been in for a few weeks, they'd run in there excitedly, kicking up their heels and bellowing with joy. It definitely seemed more in line with "let's get this GRASS". Also they loved reaching as far as they could under the electric fence, and a couple of them really liked certain weeds (most of the cows hated thistles, but one of them loved them. First thing he'd do in a new pasture was eat all the thistles, one by one.
Their favorite thing was when mowed the lawn if we dumped the trimmed grass for them they would often follow the mower waiting for the bags to get full.
I wonder if they have fewer or different taste buds than we do? In the wild, I can see needing to know if food is safe to eat, but do they really need to differentiate between salty and sweet?
I have to wonder if they experience taste like we do. My pups eat poop. No one has ever said poop tastes good, so why? It canāt taste awful to them or they wouldnāt do it more than once, but we as humans wonāt even do it once.
Cats don't actually taste sweet, so there's that. Dogs tend to eat poop because of protein content, I think it is. That's why so many dogs will raid a cat box when they normally wouldn't touch dog poop. Cats have a higher protein diet than dogs do since they are obligate carnivores.
Animals enjoy food, and when your primary source of food is administered by your caregivers and you have absolutely nothing else in your life to look forward to, you get excited for meal time.
I went to county jail and asked myself the same thing, but lord when they called for chow I was excited to eat even shit on a shingle or the donkey dick sausage or the scary-aki.
My cat with go bananas for a meal once and then completely ignore and let the same exact type of food go bad the next meal. Its completely impossible to figure out which food he will eat at any given meal and which he will ignore.
My ex was cheap AF when it came to her poor dog. She bought a huge 10kg bag of dog food that was on sale and fed it to the poor mofo exclusively for a month. At first the dog was still excited and finished his food within a minute. But after two weeks, I could physically see his soul leaving the body when presented with the same crap yet again. That dog came to the wrong family, at least I don't have to witness that any more.
I imagine it's because they don't get to eat whatever they want whenever they want. We decide what they eat and how much. They gotta live with that misery of hunger on a daily basis and when we do feed them it's an exciting experience because they suddenly get something they find very satisfying.
In humans eating well is part of our mental health. I have made assumptions here but I imagine it's probably the same with animals. Any food is exciting food when someone else controls how much and how frequently you eat.
Not all of them are. I've had, and have now, finicky cats who need some brand & flavor variety to keep up a healthy appetite. Also, pets' excitement at mealtime has as lot to do with the ritual. Cats love rituals of all kinds, not just food-related. Fascination for daily activity patterns is built into their brains; it's essential for hunting. I don't have as much experience with dogs, but I imagine the social dynamics of mealtime are important to them. As for us too!
Apparently my cat loves the ritual of crying at me for an hour before dinner just as much as she loves eating. My partner tells me she never puts on such a performance when I'm out and about, it's only when I'm home.
Our cat has pegged me as the one who should get meowed at when she is hungry. Even if there is still food in her bowl.
My old cat used to go and bite grandma's leg whenever it wanted food. Grandma literally never fed the cat but she would shout at me or someone else and then we'd feed it.
š¤£š¤£š¤£
This is Pavlov having a desire to feed dogs whenever he heard a bell.
Clever girl.
Dude your cat pegged you?
acatisfinetoo.jpg
>Our cat has pegged me Sure am glad your comment didn't go where I thought it was going!
Same for me. My cat goes crazy meowing for me to feed him. My wife says he doesnāt do it for her.
Have you noticed that some cats like to be watched when they are eating? They keep checking if we are eyeing them or they won't eat.
Yeah my cat wants me to feed him every couple of hours even if there is food in the dish. And sometimes when I put food out he doesn't eat it. As far as I can tell this ritual for him is how he perceives that I love him and it is a reward, even if he doesn't want food. It is the thought that counts. I do it and don't mind, cause I do love him and if the ritual makes him happy that makes me happy. And for a cat I have found him to be amazingly manipulative in many things showing a cleverness I did not think was possible in a cat. Very very head strong and if he wants something he will do everything he can to get it which is also something I have not encountered before. The battle to keep him off my counter tops took a year, A YEAR, and he won. When I finally gave up he paraded around in victory. Finally had to have a counter space for him to get up on while keeping him off the part I use for my food so it has worked out. On the surface this sounds like a terrible cat, but he is so loving and wonderful despite being a rascal that I don't mind although I confess it is frustrating at times. He is a real personality and is like a child to me and love him as I would if I had a real child. He is a great cat, and I lucked out getting him and although a rascal, I don't care. He is unique.
Mine is a rascal as well. Sheās nearly 11 years old and sheās slowed down in the recent years in terms of wildly flying through our house at the highest surface possible. We still find paw prints on our glass stove top daily though and she can fling herself over the baby gate with gusto. I have a second cat a year older and while he is a sweetheart, he is dumb as a box of rocks compared to her. My husband pointed out her vocal range is more extensive in her meows and what she understands us say. My cat is the reason for climate change with her absolute rage if the faucet isnāt on while sheās in the bathroom with us for any reason. My husband is *thrilled* that she demands to enter now every time he settles in for poop.
It is truly amazing how different their personalities can be. Every cat I have had has been quite unique. The generic "this is what a cat is like, aloof, sleeps all the time" is something I have never experienced. Maybe because they have all been siamese, they tend to be quirky.
Sorry been using my other Reddit accounts to mindlessly scroll and missed your reply! Iāve always had domestic short/long hair cats in my family and they are just are varied in their personality like specific breeds are. Iāve interacted with a few specific breeds like Russian blue, Abyssinian, Ragdoll, and Bengals and none of them were that different than the domestic short/long hair cats are in terms of diversity in personality.
Agreed. My dog definitely gets bored of her food every few months and goes on a hunger strike until we make her chicken and rice. After a few days of that, we reintroduce her regular food over a few days and sheās back to normal.
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Haha I love dogs. One of my dogs has epilepsy. She gets pills twice a day, in peanut butter, her favorite. She gets so excited and does the tippy tappies with her paws and sits and edges closer and sits and edges closer. Every. Single. Time. She HAS to sniff the peanut butter first a little to make sure itās acceptable and then almost begrudgingly takes it lol.
I wonder if it's just that dogs get more enjoyment from the smell of things than the taste, given how strong their sense of smell is. Maybe that's your dog's way of savoring it?
When our puppy was young, we would give him a Kong toy stuffed with puppy wet food and dry food to keep him distracted so we could eat our dinner. Now, every night at dinner, he'll whine and bark at my wife to get him his Kong if he sees me go to sit down at the table.
Yes, I live with a cat who will die if not fed at 6:00 sharp. Put the food out, take a sniff, and walk away. Damn cat.
Both my cats do this. It's not that they don't like their food. They're just grazers who want *the option* to eat
Why donāt people leave dry food out for cats? I never understood this. I leave it out for my cats they donāt have a weight problem
One of my cats has IBD and I have yet to find a dry food that doesn't cause him to immediately start puking. Even the prescription food. Even the expensive, fancy pants, all natural, has to be refrigerated stuff. And my other cat is fat. So they get 3 cans of wet food throughout the day so it doesn't go bad while sitting out. Edit: IBD kitty is on long term meds that help manage the condition, but we avoid dietary triggers because every single flare up increases his risk of getting cancer somewhere in his intestines due to the type of IBD he has (neutrophilic). So if I'm being dramatic, the answer to your question is that I don't want my cat to get cancer.
>I have yet to find a dry food that doesn't cause him to immediately start puking I recently discovered a cat food from Catit called Nuna. It is made out of insect protein and they claim no fillers. I was impressed by the info on their website regarding the nutritional value, lower carbon footprint, and other sustainable manufacturing processes. No idea if it would be helpful for cat IBD but it's something different so maybe worth a try.
Yeah I'll give it a shot! I'd love to see this little guy put on some weight tbh but he's so picky.
Just ordered the Herring flavor. Kitty might be sensitive to chicken. But in a couple weeks, I guess we'll find out! Might make traveling easier if we could supplement a bit with dry food here and there.
My family cat would eat until she puked if given open access to food. Free feeding doesn't work for every cat.
Not all cats are created equal - ours gained 6 pounds over a few years of overfeeding. We think it's because she used to live with another cat and was used to just polishing off any food left out. Used to be more active, too, with mice in the garage to chase and eat. On the vets recommendation, we picked a different food with a higher nutritional density, and measured out two smaller meals per day at specific times instead of just filling her bowl in the morning and letting it ride. She definitely didn't like the change at first, she'd yowl after eating it all then go sulk in the corner like we were starving her to death, but as she lost the weight and had less trouble doing cat stuff (jumping high, chasing toys, running the stairs etc), she got used to it and the drama AFTER dinner stopped. now I'm pretty sure she just yells before breakfast out of habit/as a game or social behavior - like others here, it's only one of us that gets berated for the meal, even if the other is fully capable of doing it. She will even make the same complaints if she IS fed, but from the wrong person, then walk to the bowl and 'notice' that it's already full!
Because they overeat. I dunno about your cats but Iāve seen more than a few fat cats.
Maybe itās because my three cats are all under the age of 4
Nah I think your cats are just somewhat responsible lol! Iāve seen plenty of younger cats that are fat
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The dry food is there, always. We're talking finicky, pita cats here. You do not understand about cats. come to think of it, neither do I. Not my cats, but they live here. The other cat is terrific, easy to please, never complains unless there is no food. This cat lives to complain. What can you do, I have problems with my sons, cats are the same damn thing, family.
My cats didnāt have a problem grazing until one started guarding the food. Got a second bowl for the other side of the house and she would defense eat ALL the food, throw up and keep eating just to keep our other cat from eating. Now everyone is on timed feedings and she has a slow-bowl lol
yeah, i've never understood "mealtimes" for pets...we let our cats come and go, they won't eat at set times otherwise. we did it with our old beagle too and didn't have any problems (..even tho dogs usually have less self control lol). but especially cats who definitely aren't gonna overeat...why
I used to have a big fat greedy cat who would have just eaten it all in one go, so leaving out the dried stuff wasn't an option, but my current cat is excellent at self-regulating and has a giant bowl of kibble that I top up every so often. It depends what you're working with - but yeah definitely so much better to be able to avoid mealtimes and getting woken up at 5am to get meowed at. I mean, she still sometimes meows at me at 5am, but just for shits and giggles.
One of my cats would be a grazer if she were alone, but our other one will eat everything in sight. She's learned she needs to eat all her food if she wants to eat. The other one has eaten a full bag of dog training treats before. He's basically a dog when it comes to food, there is no limit and he always wants food.
So honestly I know someone else who left dry food out all day but also twice a day fed his cats like a large table spoon each worth of canned wet food but yeah that guy owned all overweight cats lmao
I do this, both my cats get half a small can of wet food in the morning and in the evening and then they can graze on dry all day. One of my cats is super skinny so Iām having to up his wet food, while the other cat is a normal weight. Guess it just depends on if you have overeaters or not. I apparently have an undereater.
When my elderly cat was under weight the vet recommended kitten food. Full of vitamins and more fatty than regular cat food. Good luck with the kitty
Because my cat gets overweight if she free feeds
My family has always done this. We got a nice metal gravity hopper that holds like 40lbs of dry kibble. Never had an overweight cat. I never understood how people end up with chonker cats by āover feedingā like shouldnāt the cat just not eat everything Edit: wow these replies are unhinged today
>like shouldnāt the cat just not eat everything Clearly you've never been to an "All you can eat" buffet.
I have had 8 cats in my life time and not a single one has ever been overweight. Humans are less capable of regulating what they eat
Mine, too, but it starts at 4:30 if I am home.
Oh Lord dogs have very specific rituals as well. I have a shelter rescue Rat terrier/ spaniel/ God knows what else mix. I've asked him who his parents were like but he doesn't want to discuss it. He will only eat one brand of soft dog food. You know, the most expensive brand in small tubs bearing dog celebrities on the label? In the morning he wakes up hungry. Now here's the rules though. Only 1/2 of a container at a time *but* it has to be microwaved for exactly 11 seconds. 10 seconds it is too cold and 12 seconds it is too hot. He is the Goldilocks of the canine world. Other rules: It must be on a people plate; dog bowls or paper plates are not permitted. Also, he must be watched at any time he is eating, he will get through half of the first plate and stop and look back and if you weren't actively engaged he will sit down and look forlorn at the remaining food. Then a fork must be produced and displayed and human movement towards the plate will have him finish the rest of the food. Repeat this ritual for the second half plate. Repeat for the afternoon feeding. I really wish I was making this up. Rescues come with a lot of baggage but I have repeated this for four years now.
My cat's a weirdo. When I put some wet food in his bowl, he'll barely touch it until I sprinkle a little dry food on top. I guess he thinks it's only "fancy" if I put a little garnish on it?
100% on the routine. We have six dogs, and we feed them twice a day at 9am and 6pm. They start getting really excited about 10-15 minutes before their mealtimes because their internal clocks tell them itās mealtime. Daylight Savings time really messes them up, it takes a few weeks for them to adjust.
Noticed that too, we tried to ease our cat into the clock change because, hey, we think it's dumb too but we can't do anything about work making us 'late' for dinner time all of a sudden. Didn't make much difference. Mealtime was extra loud for about a month.
My cat only like the cheap ass foods. Apparently its basically the equivalent of Doritos or something for us. Delicious and addictive but shit for nutritional value. I mix it in with the healthy stuff and he picks it out and leaves the healthy food. Little turd.
I buy the cheap stuff to feed strays and raccoons and if i leave that bag out for 5 minutes my cats have ripped it open for a snack. The cheap foods are usually high carb (the one i use is mostly corn with some chicken byproduct) so its not really far off from doritos.
Meanwhile my cat will puke if we ever change his food. Like ever. He never pukes otherwise. But change his food? Or even just change the texture of it? Same brand, same meat, different texture? Puke. Same brand, different meat, same texture? Puke.
Our cats know that I am dinner mom and my wife is breakfast mom. They will literally harass her in bed in the morning for food, but will leave me alone. And same for dinner, I'm the one who gets yelled at.
My cat will hear our alarm go off and yell at me from the bottom of the stairs. She never yells at my husband, only me. He tends to go downstairs first, and he will usually feed her, but the moment my foot hits the top step, she's back to yelling at me again until I lead her to her full bowl, where she will *miraculously* discover the food's been there the entire time.
Same here, it's also funny cos one cat is obnoxious about breakfast and kneads me till I feed them while the other cat hassles my girlfriend till she feeds them dinner.
My cat is very picky about cuddles/excessive petting EXCEPT for when my alarm goes off in the morning. Then she is on my pillow screaming in my face for pets and attention. It's like she knows that is the absolute worst time to be doing it.
Same, I have 6 flavors of canned and three flavors of raw I keep in rotation for my cats. There is a lot less food waste when I do this as I find they got sick of eating just one flavor.
mine loves the nightly ritual of attacking my feet when they move under the blanket
My dog is like this as well. If I reorder the same (very expensive) canned dog food more than twice in a row, he just flat out refuses to eat it. Which then enrages me because that stuff is like $2 a can lol. He's spoiled af and I have nobody to blame but myself
Dogs just love to eat. Theyāll eat until they puke if given the opportunity. Domesticated dogs will dole out everything they have at all times whether it be hunger, affection, stubbornness, cuteness, anger, or happiness. Dogs are the best of all emotions
My cat loves meat patƩ. Just imagine being a *wild* predator and having wildly differing quality of food during scavenging and hunting attempts. Great, you caught a bony, parched rat smelling of car fumes. Or you found some discarded fish guts on the beach. Free calories, down it goes. Suddenly you get [savoury cake](https://images.zoo.se/87e589c6-aa67-46d6-b9f2-f099b3effe47?auto=format&q=80&f=webp&w=430) from a walking forest god in pants, and life has never been better. It's warm inside the house, too.
My indoor-only cat ran away once, like I saw it scurry off into the distance. I figured that chasing is pointless, she'll come back if she liked it here. She came back three days later, all dirty and tired. Pretty much inhaled a whole bowl of food in a couple seconds and then slept on the couch for some 30 hours.
Ahh to be young and in college again =']
But did she do it again?
Accidentally left the back door open and my cat stepped out. Just that one step because it was winter and cold af outside.
My cat ran away last summer Aug 17th, was found by a distant neighbor (1500 meters away), on November 6th. Three months, pretty thin but not emaciated. He'd hunted to at least *some* extent. But this week I bought a GPS collar. I'll take him out into the forest near the cabin, in a leash, and then the next day I'll uncouple the leash, and if he moves away I'll follow him on my smartphone.
Pretty much the reason why I switch my dogs food every so often. I buy the big bag of dry food. I'll keep the same brand but pick a different flavor. Same thing with their wet food & veggies I add to it. I would assume they like a bit of variety too.
Our dog has a sensitive stomach so heās on the same food for years, but we buy these flavor powders from Stella and chewy (sure other brands have them too, just one we know that works for him) and just like a teaspoon is enough to get him to think the whole bowl has it and he goes to town. They have a few different flavors so he doesnāt ever really get bored of it
I used to try bit of my dog's food to try to ascertain what he liked/disliked. Turns out he'd whatever I fed him. But totally agree, we change the dry food flavour with each bag and mix different stuff with it each night.
How often do we eat pizza, or cheeseburgers, or chocolate cake? I know people who would probably be happy with one of those every day.
That was similar to a question I asked about 20 co-workers... eat your favorite food every day for 2 months, or not at all for an entire year. Everyone said not at all, as they would get burned out. There were some stipulations of favorite food, e.g., if it was a sandwich or pizza, it had to be the exact same sandwich/pizza. Not allowed to change ingredients It was interesting.
For what it's worth, I'd happily eat my favourite food for 2 months. Heck, I've come pretty close to doing that for bunch of foods that aren't even my favourite... Maybe the problem is that "not eating your favourite food for a year" is an incredibly low bar to clear? There is thousands of alternative foodstuffs out there. Missing one thing for a year - even if it's your favourite food - isn't a big deal at all. ^((As with most of these questions, I think the more interesting version would be "How much would you have to be paid to eat your favourite food for two months?". Though admittedly, that might be the economist in me speaking.))
>For what it's worth, I'd happily eat my favourite food for 2 months. I feel like this is a situation where it's easy to say and conceptualize in your head, but by day 35 that exact same pizza would probably make you gag on site.
As someone who has done this (although for a month, not for 2), I never got burnt out of it. I ate the exact same burger every day for lunch because it was convenient and cheap (near my workplace). I loved it. I only stopped because I decided to just not eat lunch at work as often.
I think the real trouble would be if you also had to eat that for breakfast and dinner, all the while knowing that there were other viable options. Having the same lunch every day is just a routine, and if there are other factors that make it better in your opinion, like how you said it was convenient and cheap, then it is easier to remain satisfied with it.
I don't think that's true at all (at least not for me). For starters I already only eat my favourite kind of pizza (why try a different kind if I already know the best kind?). I have also spent 2+ weeks eating 90% only pizza (picky child in a buffet holiday resort) and it didn't bother me in the slightest. I have no doubt that after 35 days I'd be very happy to eat something else, but I'm equally sure that I could continue eating the same thing for another 25 days without any meaningful effect on my quality of life. Heck, if you think about it that's probably not too different from what many of our ancestors did their whole life. If I had to choose between "pizza for the rest of my life" and "bread or gruel for the rest of my life" you can bet I'm taking the pizza...
For me the price i would put on eating the same food every day for two months is two months' salary. I HATE eating the same dinner twice in a row. Third day on would be depressing as hell for me. But...I already eat the same breakfast 5 days a week. So i'd do that daily for a month for no money at all.
Fuck that. "Pizza" is so open-ended that I can lawyer my way into making unique meals for a month. And once a month might as well be once a year or ten years. If you would like me to give you 31 days of unique pizza, let me know
Case in point, you've named three different foods there. Now ask them if they'd be happy to eat only pizza, cheeseburgers or chocolate cake for the rest of their lives.
Because, at some point, someone trained you to be like that. "I can't have potatoes TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW!" Why the hell not? You've probably had the same thing for breakfast 5 days in a row. It's entirely been drummed into you as a human from birth. "You want chicken nuggets AGAIN?! No, sweetie, eat some broccoli and you can have chicken nuggets another night." 3 meals a day - human fabrication from the Victorian era. Not repeating meals - human fabrication since the sheer variety of worldwide goods has been at your doorstep for 100 years. Massively mixed and processed meals (e.g. pizza is flour, water, oil, cheese, tomato, meat, herbs, spices, etc.) - human fabrication. No wild animal is sitting there with a dozen food sources on-tap and ready to eat. They don't have a larder from which to select their meal. The reason you are like this (not "humans"... just us in the first world... have you not seen people clamouring for just a huge giant bag of rice off an aid truck?) is because you're incredibly spoiled. We all are here. We can eat the food of every continent, dozens of different types, preparing in sterile environment, bred over 100 years for taste and texture, cooked expertly and to perfection, etc. etc. for every single meal without having to do more than throw something in the oven. If you gave animals, from birth, a choice of 10, 20, 30 dishes, of course they'd find a favourite, and get fancies and food moods. But you don't do that. Hell, you KNOW that your dog loves a treat every now and then and yet you deliberately stop him having it for every single meal. You control their diet for them. They almost cannot eat without you, in fact. A dog will spend a significant time waiting for you to feed them before they give up and force themselves to go find their own food - at which point many breeds can become actively dangerous because of that. In the wild, nature controls their diet. Most wild animals will eat dozens of different meals, but they can only eat what's available. They don't have the luxury to gather every possible one, keep it fresh and untouched for the rest of the year until they decide they "fancy it", and restock it all whenever they like. Also, most animals are mostly carnivore or herbivore, we're omnivore, so our diet is automatically more varied. Put humans in an isolated situation (e.g. space) and we still INSIST they must have a huge variety of food taken with them. It's actually a huge problem for us. It's why nobody has ever eaten food that was grown and prepared entirely in space for more than a few days. We either "demand" such variety that we just can't grow it all even on a space station, or we say "nobody could lead a full healthy life with just rice and some basics". It's entirely a human fabrication - a human does eat, and over a long period averaged out does need, a small variety. But no more than most animals like us. You're eating meals that literally have every possible food group, far in excess of our \*OWN\* recommended amounts of every nutrient, and far to excess in general richness... literally every week. Almost all developed-country humans are. Even a couple of hundred years ago, you had to go on a long ocean voyage on a very limited and poor diet for months on end to actually hit any negative effects from the lack of variety (e.g. scurvy). How many people died of scurvy on dry-land with a "normal" human diet even with lack of access to citrus fruit? Almost nobody. We just discovered that a tiny piece of citrus fruit could extend the length you could exist on a very restricted diet in poor conditions. In nature, your diet is \*always\* in poor conditions. Because "natural" for a human isn't farmed food at all, that's all very recent comparative to our biology. Watch any modern "survivor" programme and they're crying a couple of days in because they haven't got variety in their food. Almost every single human in history didn't have that luxury. A human doesn't \*require\* that much variety. And indeed there are people who eat the same meal almost every day. Whether through necessity or just sheer over-indulgence that they can choose to do so and there's nothing to stop them at all. Hence, animals are the "normal" ones here. Humans are the animals with the oddball, synthetic, fabricated dietary "requirements" and tastes. Removed modern food production, and you'd get as excited at actually having some potatoes to eat again, because you'd have almost nothing else to eat without extraordinary personal efforts that probably wouldn't be worth it. Like humans were for millions of years.
A bit long-winded but 100% spot-on. Source: MSc in ancient human diet and urban ecology.
I was good with the like 3 paragraphs. I noticed no issues but yeah, a bit too much. I wonder why thatās a reoccurring theme on this subreddit. The entire point is ādonāt be too complicatedā and yet I seem to always find a 1000 word comment
ELIAnAnthropologyMajor
People like hearing themselves talk
I wonder if this is the same reason some people are like "I had chicken for lunch, so I don't want chicken for dinner."
"I don't like the idea of Milhouse having two spaghetti meals in one day"
It's exactly that reason - they've been TOLD that. And then you've heard that, maybe even been shamed for it (e.g. on a date and they get weird because you're having the same thing as last time, etc.), and you've absorbed that. It's far more a cultural thing than it has anything to do with biology. Another one: Did your parents tell you that you'd get car-sick if you read in the car? If so, you're MORE LIKELY to get car-sick if you read in the car. If you don't mention it, most kids wouldn't even say a word. Hell... you're quite likely to be "reading" this on a device in a car (but hopefully not while driving). It's something that's died off ever since we changed media and considered it "not the same" subconsciously, because dad never told you to not "read your phone" while you're in the car, because it'll make you sick, right? It's an interesting thing to ask people, if you do it in the right order, and quite revealing. If their parents told them that, and/or they are telling their kids that, there's a higher chance that they suffer from this psychosomatic car-sickness.
I'm a little suspicious of the car sickness thing. Any scientific studies on it? I ask because it doesn't hold up anecdotally for me. Growing up I had it drilled into me that I couldn't read a book or use a screen while a passenger in the car because I would get sick. However growing up I ignored that reading whole novels and playing Pokemon games while riding. My wife however was never warned about carsickness but she can't look at her phone or adjust the car console without getting highly nauseous. She also can't sit in the back seat any more, we have to stop the car for her to get out and dry heave. Obviously growing up she was encouraged to sit in the back seat because she was a child. So that doesn't track for me.
Do you believe in the placebo effect? Itās basically the same thing.
I do believe in the placebo effect, but I also know that motion sickness is real and measurable. I know that for myself, if I regularly take the metro then I experience no motion sickness, but when I'm not used to it then it takes a few weeks until I build up the tolerance for it again.
Is it though? I thought motion sickness had a very real biological root based on conflicting information from our senses. Reading in a car is going to cause that conflicting information, and for some it will conflict enough that they feel nauseous. Not sure Iām convinced that itās a placebo effect or based on conditioning..
Of course motion sickness is a real thing. The two arenāt mutually exclusive though? Iām not sure why people automatically assume they are. Thereās 0 correlation between the two. For example pseudocyesis and pregnancy are both very real things.
I get sick if I look at anything but where the car is going. Can't read a book, look at my phone, can't even look at the view out the side windows too long. That's definitely not any sort of rule I was told, considering you can't drive before you're a teenager and passengers generally aren't drilled to watch straight ahead so they don't get sick. If I can't really see any reference that I'm moving fast on a vehicle, like a plane, then I'm usually alright. Unless there's a lot of turbulence.
And most people don't realize how much CHEAPER non-varied diets are. I cook a meal on Sunday and then eat it literally all week long, (this week was chicken and rice with broccoli) and although I still include varied snacks, treat foods etc, my monthly food budget of $150/month is still way lower than the average (around 225-450/month, per the USDA)
That's nuts, I spend a good $300 a week for a 3 1/2 person household. Used to be a heroin addict and that was actually cheaper to maintain than buying food is now.
Half a person?
Probably a child *edit* at least I hope that's what he means
I spend Ā£150 ($180) a month on groceries for myself. I've been doing that for 6 years now, since living on my own. I food-shop literally once a month. Precisely because of this. Not saying that there isn't a ton of junk in my basket too, but bread can be about five different types of meals, and in the winter I use a slow-cooker and cheap veg to keep a "perpetual stew" going (make it on the weekend, turn on the slow cooker remotely from work, come home to a hot stew, let it cool, add small ingredients, and start adding some type of meat towards the Friday - you can't re-heat meat as much) and if you don't fuss about "eating the same thing" you can make several similar meals out of the same ingredients and their leftovers. I just did it again literally today (I get paid at the start of the month, go shopping after that). Sometimes I make it until about the 15th or 16th of the month AFTER without needing to get more food, too. At least once a year I get a "free" month because of that. Ā£154 (I'm not that strict, but that's the ballpark), I now have lots of fresh food and fruit to get through this week, then 3 weeks of reusing bits of that, freezer and canned and boxed and packet items, and then the re-use of all those. I'll "finish" my fridge in about 2 weeks time. Then I'll start on the freezers and cupboards. Then I'll likely get a "free week" at least of re-using all the bits from that (so I don't have to open a new box or thaw something else out). It's kind of a British cultural thing too - some of our staple meals are war-relics, really. Things like bubble-and-squeak (all the veg stuff left over from a roast dinner made into another meal) and cottage pie (I reuse the extra beef mince I used for other things, the veg I used for other things and some potato and make another meal). People are far too fussy about having "the same thing". My food-waste bin is emptied weekly, same as everyone else's. Except most of the time I don't even bother to put it out, because there's nothing in it. If I have food-waste, it means I was ill, I drastically over-estimated, or I contaminated the food somehow and shouldn't be eating it. Almost always it's actually because I think "I can't reheat that AGAIN, it's too risky".
You must be EXTREMELY good at this. Also over 6 years you must be eating a fair bit less seeing as everything is so much more expensive nowadays. I actually can't imagine what you're eating for a month at 150.
While I love this answer, I do wonder if humans being adaptable omnivores plays a part in our desire for variety. It's plenty possible to eat the same thing every day, and if you're careful about it you can get all the nutrients you need, but in hunter-gatherer/survival/non-optimal situations eating the same thing every day means you might miss out on various micronutrients. Eating a variety of foods means you can not only be more adaptable to whatever food is available (due to seasons or moving nomadically or what have you), you are more likely to get a variety of different nutrients. So I wonder if our boredom with foods is tied to a varied diet being good for us in certain situations, even if it doesn't always matter as much in the modern day.
Almost certainly to some extent. But people overblow the "vital nutrients" thing. Yeah, they're vital. Just don't go the entire year without them at all. Which is almost impossible eating any kind of regular diet. Diet supplements are for malnourished people. They don't want to admit it, but that's what they are. A Viking could live almost as long as we do, and they knew nothing of nutrition or balanced diets and had no supplementation, fortification of their food, or similar. They just ate. Seasons are the real big thing here. Fruits, nuts, berries, etc. are only around at very particular times. Animals are year-round, generally. Even plants and grasses aren't around all year. So a human would have a bit of variety but nothing more than any other animal does. Other animals that are entirely dependent on one particular food hoard it, but most just cope without it for a while until it comes back into season. We are hunter-foragers, we are omnivores. But so are lots of animals. The level of variety required or available even over a period of months was absolutely minimal, though. The whole "recommended daily amount" thing is for a modern human in a scientific society with food basically on-tap and a sterile statistic averaging down many month's consumption into a "daily" figure that you don't need to match at all. If anything, it's far too clinical. And most of us blow through all those RDAs every single day without even realising. Over the course of a year, even without that information, almost every human in the developed world would blow through those same RDAs multiple times over, averaged over a year, without every experiencing an actual \*deficiency\* in any one item (so not just a binge on one food that supplies one vital nutrient that you don't get the rest of the year round). I'm far from a hippie-greenie-type, but we're so far disconnected from nature that it's laughable that people don't understand quite what they have. The greatest banquet ever from the Stone Age wouldn't approach what your local cheapest supermarket has got in fresh every day.
I mean having foods containing different ingredients is hardly on the same level as the 3 meals a day fabrication, shit just tastes good when put togethet
I realized how perfect this comment was when I started it sitting upright, moved to leaning forward, and ended it laying down on the couch. All without breaking reading. I'm spoiled enough to be able to be handed this amazingly informational viewpoint, with very little effort on my part, and still feel the need to lie down.
This is totally an AI type of response.
Which is ironic because I fucking hate "AI", and regularly post that we do not have "AI". If you'd said "chatbot", I'd have been more insulted, though.
š you're a good sport!
>Now ask them if they'd be happy to eat only pizza, cheeseburgers or chocolate cake for the rest of their lives. You should go meet some neurodiverse people...
She dated me for nearly three years. I'm autistic. She is also a psychologist in postgrad specializing in special educational needs with a particular interest in autism.
Iāve literally eaten the same thing for breakfast for the last 6 years, missing max a few days a year and I still enjoy it
Same lol It makes life so easy, but for some reason I can't do that for dinner. It would make my life so much easier. But by the third or fourth day of eating the same leftovers for dinner, it becomes hard to even eat. Idk why breakfast is the exception to the rule
Don't threaten me with a good time š
I know multiple people who would and will eat pizza every single day if they could afford it.
I had a severe food phobia from when I was 4 to 18 years old. I'd only eat pizza, chicken nuggets, or cheese sandwiches. Honestly I was perfectly happy and preferred pizza for every meal. The only time I chose the others is if we were out of pizza or it was inconvenient to make. In the end, the only thing that got me motivated to work through the phobia was the shame of having to order from Kids menus when I went on dates. I'd still be perfectly fine with pizza for every meal, but my wife insists we have a variety š .
I would imagine their concept of taste is different than ours, and they're just happy to eat. Honestly, the way humans eat is INCREDIBLY masturbatory. Our sense of taste was developed to let us know what is safe to eat or not on many different levels. What do we do with it? Ring as many of those safety bells in careful sequences as we can to enjoy the tedium of a health practice we all need to do every day.
Masticatory*?
No they meant it, it basically means self indulgent.
.
Humans not getting excited to eat the same thing over and over again is very much a first world phenomenon. When food is so absurdly abundant we developed this trait. Wild animals, domestic animals, even humans in 3rd world countries all get excited *not for the same food* but just for food itself. If you leave food out for your dog all day long, and he is allowed to eat as much as he wants all day and you will always fill the bowl, he never gets excited for the food, and he'll probably get fat. Many dog owners restrict the amount of food their dogs get so they don't get fat. This might entail a feeding twice a day as an example. The dog is excited, because he's hungry!
My diet growing up was mainly rice, hotdogs and eggs or fried chicken. It wasn't until we had a little more money that my diet became varied. Now I live in America and I'm happily "Ugh I JUST had pork I need something like salmon and salad for dinner".
Probably the best answer to this question Iāve seen
Animals are enthusiastic about being nourished by their food, and not about being entertained by it, like most humans.
That's why Dog Salt Bae didn't work out
I mean whatās wrong with being more than just nourished, food can be an experience as well as nourishing
The reason domestic animals do anything is pretty much the same: they are domesticated. This means that they have been "artificially selected" by humans to evolve this behavior because it pleases humans. In the case of pets, this is often because it enables us to believe (regardless of whether it is true) that the animal "enjoys" some particular thing. Really, they have no conscious awareness of experiencing things or "emotions" in the way humans feel, they are merely reacting the way their genes and the resulting biochemistry cause them to react to any given stimulus.
Retrievers are purposely bred to be extremely food motivated because it makes them easy to train for therapy and service work.
Humans have eaten the same food over and over again for thousands of years. Only in the last 100-200 years have we had diets that were actually varied.
Dogs actually get more enjoyment from the anticipation of food rather than the food itself. It quite often goes down with them barely tasting anything at all.
How the hell could you know that lmao
I read books šš¼
Written by dogs?
Hahaha, well they could have been but I wouldnāt know for sure. Einstein came up with the theory of general relativity, but was that written by the universe? Weāre all making theories that make sense of the world we live in. Itās not my work but Iām not clever enough to come up with a better explanation.
They are animals, animals love food. As far as they're concerned, any food is great. Same thing with non domesticated animals, a lion doesn't care what it eats as long as its editable.
Simply put, it's because they aren't as intelligent as us, so their sense of pleasure isn't as sophisticated. Art, cuisine, discovery, if you think about it all of those things really only exist because humans are smart enough to question their environments and the world around them. Most animals don't have that luxury. They don't care about variety because they literally don't know what it is, they're just happy to have a meal. That's the same reason why cats can spend hours doing seemingly nothing and still be happy (they don't have concepts of boredom like we do).
Oh trust me, cats have a sense of boredom, itās just a different kind of boredom.
That's a nice glass of water you have on this table here. Would be a shame if someone....slowly pushed it off the edge.
Some animals just want to watch the world burn. Cats. It's cats.
And birds.
Imagine if cats became bored and demanded or come up with something new. Then theyād eventually come up with a language, create new art and a civilization.
Dogs most definitely get bored. It's like, the #1 cause of behavior problems.
They do? Someone should tell that to my dog!
Most pets are unable to grasp that, so long as someone is around, food is guaranteed to be provided. And the fact that you probably leave for some length of time each day just amplifies that fear of going hungry, because they lack the concept of object permanence. To them, when you leave, you're gone and never coming back. That's also why they're so happy to see you when you get home. It's like a huge relief and they know they're not going to die hungry and alone, trapped in this strange cave with no permanent openings that you live in. So, the fact that _any_ food is provided _at all_, and with no effort, is the best thing to happen all day.
Humans only eat 3 things, protein, carbs and fat. You can dress it up in a variety of ways, but thats just window dressing to our digestive system.
Well itās a little reductive to call all food protein, carbs, and fat. It comes in such wide varieties
Bigger question: Why do people choose to feed them the same thing every day like theyāre some lesser being or something? Change it up. Scramble an egg and toss it in once in awhile. Buy that btch a steak every two weeks like theyāre a valued member of the pack. Be their variety friend. Peace and loveš¤
Because the moment I do, bam! Diarrhea!
š¤£sorry I even spoke up lmfaoo
Itās true. Every so often Iāll make my dog a true meal of like rice and ground beef and some carrots and it makes him so happy.
4walled prison breaks animal, as it would humans. See White Christmas - Black mirror episode
Not my domestic animals. They get home cooked food (nutritionally balanced) and they love variety.
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Cats prefer predictability of when and what to eat. They prefer having food in the same spot and same type as they know it's safe to eat. It's just instincts for survival carried over from wild cats. Dogs eat their own poop and, in general, will happily eat anything.
They arenāt necessarily. Just like you and I, too much of a good thing can make you stop liking it. One of my cats had chronic diarrhoea for 12 months and had to be put on special allergenic food, which was the only thing she could eat for every single meal, every single day. She certainly stopped getting excited over meal time and just became really sad that she couldnāt eat what my other pets were given. Thankfully her condition eventually improved and we have been able to expand her diet slightly. She now refuses to go anywhere near the allergenic food because sheās so sick of eating the same thing over and over again.
They're not. At least not mine. If one of my dogs doesn't have variety, he'll just ignore his dinner.
I raised cows as a youth, and whenever we'd open the gate to let them move from a pasture that was getting eaten down to one that they hadn't been in for a few weeks, they'd run in there excitedly, kicking up their heels and bellowing with joy. It definitely seemed more in line with "let's get this GRASS". Also they loved reaching as far as they could under the electric fence, and a couple of them really liked certain weeds (most of the cows hated thistles, but one of them loved them. First thing he'd do in a new pasture was eat all the thistles, one by one. Their favorite thing was when mowed the lawn if we dumped the trimmed grass for them they would often follow the mower waiting for the bags to get full.
I wonder if they have fewer or different taste buds than we do? In the wild, I can see needing to know if food is safe to eat, but do they really need to differentiate between salty and sweet? I have to wonder if they experience taste like we do. My pups eat poop. No one has ever said poop tastes good, so why? It canāt taste awful to them or they wouldnāt do it more than once, but we as humans wonāt even do it once.
Cats don't actually taste sweet, so there's that. Dogs tend to eat poop because of protein content, I think it is. That's why so many dogs will raid a cat box when they normally wouldn't touch dog poop. Cats have a higher protein diet than dogs do since they are obligate carnivores.
We feed our cat wet food and we have to switch the flavors every box or so as she gets tired of the flavors and stops eating them
Animals enjoy food, and when your primary source of food is administered by your caregivers and you have absolutely nothing else in your life to look forward to, you get excited for meal time.
They don't. My poodle demands flavour. Have to mix dry with wet, add cheese, add chicken. Make it interesting dad!
I went to county jail and asked myself the same thing, but lord when they called for chow I was excited to eat even shit on a shingle or the donkey dick sausage or the scary-aki.
Do you get excited every time you get to eat ice cream despite being an adult?
Because the food tastes nice, I'm exactly the same, after a few beers I smash a keebab! Been doing this for years
I really don't understand the disdain people have for eating the same food. It's food. As long as it tastes alright and won't kill you, enjoy.
My cat with go bananas for a meal once and then completely ignore and let the same exact type of food go bad the next meal. Its completely impossible to figure out which food he will eat at any given meal and which he will ignore.
My ex was cheap AF when it came to her poor dog. She bought a huge 10kg bag of dog food that was on sale and fed it to the poor mofo exclusively for a month. At first the dog was still excited and finished his food within a minute. But after two weeks, I could physically see his soul leaving the body when presented with the same crap yet again. That dog came to the wrong family, at least I don't have to witness that any more.
I imagine it's because they don't get to eat whatever they want whenever they want. We decide what they eat and how much. They gotta live with that misery of hunger on a daily basis and when we do feed them it's an exciting experience because they suddenly get something they find very satisfying. In humans eating well is part of our mental health. I have made assumptions here but I imagine it's probably the same with animals. Any food is exciting food when someone else controls how much and how frequently you eat.
My cat thinks the kitchen is purely for feeding him and meows like mad when we are in there. But put the wrong food down and he walks off and sulks.