Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And hey, I guess if
Speaker 3: everything is going according to plan. This is our first
Speaker 3: video episode publishing simultaneously to Netflix, though I think some
Speaker 3: of the episodes we recorded in the past few weeks
Speaker 3: are also being uploaded there. So if you are just
Speaker 3: listening to us in audio format right now, you can
Speaker 3: now find us in video podcast format on Netflix. This
Speaker 3: is brand new for us, so we kind of don't
Speaker 3: know what we're doing yet. We hope it's okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're in three D to understand they had three dimensions.
Speaker 2: Smell vision has also been deployed. Really, all the bells
Speaker 2: and whistles.
Speaker 3: If only we could arrange the tingler to come into
Speaker 3: all of your home.
Speaker 2: I was told the tingler option was available. Check your
Speaker 2: Netflix settings, I guess. But yeah, it's exciting here we
Speaker 2: are recording from our respective abodes.
Speaker 3: This is my dank basement.
Speaker 2: And I'm attending to you from the limitless dark void.
Speaker 2: That's where I am.
Speaker 3: Aka the guest room.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's a guest room. Sometimes it's a limitless dark void.
Speaker 3: Yes, but hey, so we were trying to think what
Speaker 3: would be the most amazingly compelling subject matter to talk
Speaker 3: about for our first ever video format episode, and we
Speaker 3: decided to talk about dog biscuits.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I originally brought the idea up as a joke
Speaker 2: because we were like, well, can we do that's a
Speaker 2: single episode? Well, we could do an invention episode. We've
Speaker 2: done a lot of invention style episodes over the years,
Speaker 2: and we used to do an invention podcast. You can
Speaker 2: find all that wherever you get your audio podcasts. And
Speaker 2: so I was like, okay, we could do an invention
Speaker 2: and I don't know, off the cuff, I was like
Speaker 2: dog biscuits because the term is inherently funny. The actual
Speaker 2: item is, of course thoroughly mundane. But then I kept
Speaker 2: thinking about it, and then I dug into it just
Speaker 2: a tiny bit and instantly became convinced, No, this is
Speaker 2: no joke. We absolutely need to talk about dog biscuits.
Speaker 3: There is something to talk about, and hey, if you're
Speaker 3: new to our show, I guess kind of part of
Speaker 3: what we do is try to figure out what's interesting
Speaker 3: about everything, and that would everything does include dog biscuits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we may talk about black holes one week, we
Speaker 2: may talk about you know, psychological concept or philosophical concept
Speaker 2: another week, and then it could be dog biscuits. It
Speaker 2: could be something that if you take for granted, but
Speaker 2: then when you apply a little bit of scrutiny and
Speaker 2: you dig into it, it's fascinating and is indeed mind blowing.
Speaker 3: So you're not a dog owner, but you are a
Speaker 3: cat owner. And what I've been curious about is are
Speaker 3: there cat biscuits?
Speaker 2: I mean, not so much in my experience and my experience,
Speaker 2: you have the little cat treats, which they love, and
Speaker 2: that's the I guess, the equivalent the dessert for cats.
Speaker 2: It is hard, whereas my cat's normal food is soft
Speaker 2: and wet and or absolute liquid. She's old, she gets
Speaker 2: many different types of foods at this point, but she
Speaker 2: still loves the little hard treats. But they are they're
Speaker 2: not the big like bone shaped biscuit that the big
Speaker 2: you know, the Scooby snack, the treat that we associate
Speaker 2: with dogs. That there may be products like that on
Speaker 2: the market for cats, and I'm just not aware of them.
Speaker 2: But when you go through certainly when you go through
Speaker 2: the pet store checkout line. What I'm used to seeing
Speaker 2: is that kind of cafeteria style selection of dog treats
Speaker 2: where it's like all sorts of shapes, some of them
Speaker 2: bone shaped and so forth, but others look like an
Speaker 2: oreo cookie or some sort of you know, cookies, snacks,
Speaker 2: some sort of human dessert treat, which can be very
Speaker 2: confusing if you're going through there with like a toddler
Speaker 2: and they're like, I want some of the obvious human
Speaker 2: foods here, and you're like, no, no, no, those are
Speaker 2: just for canines.
Speaker 3: This is funny because I was thinking before we started
Speaker 3: recording about how dog treats. I mean, I guess pet
Speaker 3: treats in general, but you know, dog treats are sort
Speaker 3: of the big one that people think about. They're weird
Speaker 3: because they're marketed as if they're designed to appeal to dogs.
Speaker 3: So you see the commercial for them on TV or
Speaker 3: I remember the ones when I was a kid, at least,
Speaker 3: for like, do you remember the commercials for bacon strips
Speaker 3: that are dogs. Don't no, it's not bacon, it's bacon,
Speaker 3: you remember, Yeah, Yeah, So the whole thing in the
Speaker 3: commercial is they're showing you how much dogs want this
Speaker 3: treat and how good they feel when they get it.
Speaker 3: But dogs can't buy treats. They don't have credit cards,
Speaker 3: they don't have money, so they can't go get treats
Speaker 3: for themselves. Humans do all of the buying and selling
Speaker 3: of dog treats, so dog treats are actually marketed to
Speaker 3: appeal not to dogs, but to humans. So the seller
Speaker 3: has to appeal to something you might call preference by proxy.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like advertising toys to kids, you know,
Speaker 3: because kids don't usually have money to spend. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, things been their allowance or whatever. But usually
Speaker 3: if you're trying to sell a toy to a kid,
Speaker 3: you have to find a way to get the parents
Speaker 3: or caregivers to buy the toy for the kid. Except
Speaker 3: there's a difference between kids and dogs. At least with kids.
Speaker 3: After a certain age, they can tell adults what they want,
Speaker 3: So there is an added layer of complexity because the
Speaker 3: purchase is gatelocked behind a secondary decision maker. You have
Speaker 3: to appeal to the kid and then also get past
Speaker 3: the approval of the money spender. So dogs are kind
Speaker 3: of like that, except you kind of skip the primary
Speaker 3: preference holder entirely because the commercial is not for the dog.
Speaker 3: Your appeal goes straight to the buyer, and it's like, human,
Speaker 3: imagine what kind of treat you would want if you
Speaker 3: were a dog. You will almost certainly not be tasting
Speaker 3: this yourself, So you're never gonna know. You know, you
Speaker 3: just think, like, wow, my dog really liked that. But
Speaker 3: in my experience, dogs like all food that you give them,
Speaker 3: So how can you really tell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a kid and a dog may have an
Speaker 2: actual desire for something, especially something to eat that is
Speaker 2: actually kind of gross or rather gross sometimes in the
Speaker 2: case of dogs, you know. But yeah, like you're saying
Speaker 2: it's marketed towards the human beings, and you said that
Speaker 2: humans will probably not taste it. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: humans will generally almost taste it because humans will smell
Speaker 2: the dog food. And that's a whole point. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: a whole important aspect of dog food design. I'm to
Speaker 2: understand is that humans do have to on some level
Speaker 2: want to eat the dog food or the cat food,
Speaker 2: or whatever the child may be. I guess it breaks
Speaker 2: down a bit when you get into lizard food and
Speaker 2: so forth, but with cats and dogs, it's certainly the case.
Speaker 3: Well in the same way that the toy that is
Speaker 3: most viscerally appealing to a child may not actually pass
Speaker 3: the adult buyer test because like a lot of such
Speaker 3: toys would be extremely dangerous or detrimental to a child's
Speaker 3: health or something, you know, like the child wants the
Speaker 3: bebe gun or whatever, so like you can't do that.
Speaker 3: In the same I think, what is most viscerally appealing
Speaker 3: to a dog may well not pass the human smell test.
Speaker 2: That's right, But again the humans have to buy it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so this will all be important stuff to keep in
Speaker 2: mind as we take this journey through ultimately the deep
Speaker 2: history of dog snacks. I'd say that this was the
Speaker 2: big surprise for me, not knowing anything about the history
Speaker 2: of dog treats dog biscuits, is that I really just
Speaker 2: assumed that it was a fairly recent invention. Like if
Speaker 2: you were to just quiz me on the street, I
Speaker 2: would say like, oh, I don't know, nineteen forties, nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: something like that. But ultimately the roots go far deeper.
Speaker 3: Goes way back. Are you ready for me to talk
Speaker 3: a little bit about this paper I looked up about
Speaker 3: the science of dog snacks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get into it, so I dug up a.
Speaker 3: Paper that was published in twenty twenty four in Frontiers
Speaker 3: and Animal Science called the Science of Snacks a Review
Speaker 3: of Dog Treats to review. The authors are Bogden, Alexandru Callencia,
Speaker 3: Sarana Diina, and Adrian Makri. And in this paper, the
Speaker 3: authors are doing kind of a general overview of research
Speaker 3: on the market for dog treats and associated trends in
Speaker 3: pet ownership. So they cover things like nutrition and safety
Speaker 3: in the treat sector, but also more relevant to me,
Speaker 3: they talk a bit about changes in dog owner's psychology
Speaker 3: and how that relates to the history of treat giving behavior.
Speaker 3: So just to mention a few interesting things. In their
Speaker 3: background section, they talk about how the population of companion animals,
Speaker 3: including dogs, is increasing worldwide and treats account for about
Speaker 3: fifteen percent of the total value of the US pet
Speaker 3: food market. The pet food market has grown in recent years,
Speaker 3: and the greatest sector of growth within it has been
Speaker 3: snacks and treats. So pet treats are on the come
Speaker 3: up and this reflects, they say, an evolving relationship between
Speaker 3: humans and dogs in recent decades, where dog owners of
Speaker 3: today are more likely than dog owners of previous generations
Speaker 3: to report having deep bonds and emotional relationships with their animals.
Speaker 3: And this isn't to say that you know, nobody ever
Speaker 3: had a deep feeling of companionship with the dog before today,
Speaker 3: but that more people report those kinds of feelings as
Speaker 3: time goes on, and people also reflect differences across the
Speaker 3: span of their lives, like adults now talk about their
Speaker 3: dog being a part of the family or feeling closer
Speaker 3: to their dogs now than they remember from when they
Speaker 3: were children. So it seems to be like an increasing
Speaker 3: cultural trend to have these deeper attachments to our companion animals.
Speaker 3: And this deeper attachment manifests in feeding behavior, where dog
Speaker 3: owners express their love by giving food and especially by
Speaker 3: giving treats, because food, you know that might be viewed
Speaker 3: as functional or nutritional, treats are more like a gift.
Speaker 3: That's how you just really show your love that the
Speaker 3: dog's love language is, you know, bagan strips or whatever.
Speaker 3: And the authors mention one study that found that dog
Speaker 3: owners tended to believe that not giving their dogs treats
Speaker 3: was similar to not giving their children toys and believed
Speaker 3: that dog owners believed the giving of treats to be
Speaker 3: a necessary part of the human's relationship with a dog. Also,
Speaker 3: you can just notice that dog owners describe taking care
Speaker 3: of their dogs today in many of the same terms
Speaker 3: that parents use to describe caring for their kids.
Speaker 2: Now, you'll have to speak to this more since you
Speaker 2: have been a dog owner in your adult life and
Speaker 2: I have not. But treats are also an important part
Speaker 2: of just the behavior of the dog, right, and training
Speaker 2: to some extent the dog, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think this is a shift somewhat that
Speaker 3: treats used to be seen more as as functional rewards,
Speaker 3: as something that you would use to to you know,
Speaker 3: provide a motive or incentive to the dog to pay
Speaker 3: attention and you know, repeat good behaviors during training, and
Speaker 3: probably in past you know years, they would they would
Speaker 3: use more negative incentives as well, but more and more
Speaker 3: all the time, it seems like treats are for bonding.
Speaker 3: They are a gift given out of love to show
Speaker 3: the bond between the human and the animal and to
Speaker 3: make the animal happy.
Speaker 2: Gotcha.
Speaker 3: So the authors of this paper, they list they or
Speaker 3: they at least cite another paper that mentioned six major
Speaker 3: categories of dog treats. I love. Somebody's made the taxonomy here,
Speaker 3: so you got biscuit, bone, chew, dental meat product, and
Speaker 3: raw hide. And of biscuits specifically, they had a few notes.
Speaker 3: They say, usually made from wheat flour, baked and dried
Speaker 3: slowly in an oven, and it creates this crunchy texture.
Speaker 3: A lot of dog treats on the market today advertise
Speaker 3: dental health benefits, you know, they say, like the crunching
Speaker 3: will you know? It is of such a texture that
Speaker 3: it may help clean the dog's teeth, or at least
Speaker 3: it's advertised to do that. And as of a twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen study by White at All biscuits were the most
Speaker 3: popular type of treats given to dogs in the US,
Speaker 3: accounting for seventy seven percent of all treats. So it's
Speaker 3: biscuits by a mile, and that they actually have multiple benefits,
Speaker 3: not just in what people think their dogs might want
Speaker 3: to eat, probably also in affordability compared to some other
Speaker 3: types of treats, but also dog biscuits tend to have
Speaker 3: a long shelf life because of their low moisture content.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like hard tack that you'd give to
Speaker 3: an army on the road.
Speaker 2: Have you, in fact, ever in your life attempted to
Speaker 2: take a little nibble off of a dog treat.
Speaker 3: No, I never have, because I did as a child.
Speaker 3: Really we did, even without a dog.
Speaker 2: No. No, we had a dog when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: But we were a kid. Okay, yeah, what is that?
Speaker 2: A different era of dog ownership? You know, this is
Speaker 2: the dog that lived outdoors and we lived in the country.
Speaker 2: But I at some point just had to sort of like,
Speaker 2: you know, at least stick my tongue to it and see, like,
Speaker 2: is this something that a human could eat? No, they
Speaker 2: could not, but I think you could. You can understand
Speaker 2: why someone might be tempted. In part, I blame Scooby
Speaker 2: Doo because Shaggy would eat Scooby snacks as well for
Speaker 2: some reason, right, but also.
Speaker 3: For some reason, And what was that reason.
Speaker 2: Because I don't know he liked he just liked him.
Speaker 2: I don't know it was their incentive for solving crimes.
Speaker 2: But I think the thing to drive home here, and
Speaker 2: you touched on this already talking about the composition of
Speaker 2: the dog treats is that they are bread. They are
Speaker 2: a bread product, and bread is for humans. So like
Speaker 2: we can't help but think we recognize it on some
Speaker 2: level as being human food, even though it is so
Speaker 2: incredibly hard that it is not, among other reasons inadvisable
Speaker 2: that we attempt to consume it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not suited to human taste. So I have never
Speaker 3: tried a dog treat or dog food. But I was
Speaker 3: actually just talking to my wife Rachel before we recorded today,
Speaker 3: and it came up. We're like, did you ever try
Speaker 3: a dog treat? And she has. She did it actually
Speaker 3: when she was a kid. She proposed to her little sister.
Speaker 3: She said, hey, will you give me fifty cents if
Speaker 3: I eat this? Actually I don't remember. She said it
Speaker 3: was a piece of dog kibble or a dog treat.
Speaker 3: It was one or the other. And her sister was like, okay,
Speaker 3: I guess I will. And so she started to eat it,
Speaker 3: but it was so disgusting she couldn't finish it. But
Speaker 3: she ate half of it. So she made her little
Speaker 3: sister pay her twenty five cents. Oh wow, it seems
Speaker 3: only fair.
Speaker 2: That one could have. Really, that could have become tied
Speaker 2: up in legal proceedings there, like it technically didn't eat
Speaker 2: the whole treat or the whole kibble. But no, okay,
Speaker 2: everyone left happy.
Speaker 3: This is why you get everything in writing before do
Speaker 3: deals like this, you know. So thinking about these changes
Speaker 3: in dog treats and pet treats generally, it brought me
Speaker 3: to another thing. So I was reading more generally about
Speaker 3: how there is research on growing trends in the pet
Speaker 3: food market that point out this increasing trend toward anthropomorphization
Speaker 3: in dog treats. Or maybe that's not the right word.
Speaker 3: That might imply the dog treats are taking human form.
Speaker 3: But dog treats, instead of taking human form, taking the
Speaker 3: form of human food. So you would have treats with
Speaker 3: visual design, naming, and supposedly flavor. But who's going to know,
Speaker 3: I guess unless you try it yourself. You know, supposedly
Speaker 3: flavor that is said to mimic human foods, so you
Speaker 3: can think of little doggy pizza bites. I was looking
Speaker 3: some of these up before we started. You know, it's
Speaker 3: not gonna be like human pizza. Instead, it's some kind
Speaker 3: of biscuit like thing that looks like human pizza. I
Speaker 3: found one that was advertising something called a Margurrita flavor,
Speaker 3: and you know, little doggy tacos and little doggy hamburgers
Speaker 3: and all that kind of stuff. And then so that's
Speaker 3: like dog treats made out of normal dog treat stuff
Speaker 3: shaped and made to look like human foods. And then
Speaker 3: you can also think about these dog friendly versions of
Speaker 3: human treats, like dog ice cream. Obviously it's a different
Speaker 3: formula here. You know, dogs do not need that much sugar.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess humans don't either, but you know,
Speaker 3: dogs really shouldn't need that much sugar, so you know,
Speaker 3: you don't give them human ice cream. There's like a
Speaker 3: special dog ice cream. And then the pop cup phenomenon.
Speaker 3: Have you heard about this?
Speaker 2: No, what's a pop cup?
Speaker 3: I think it's like I've never gotten one of these,
Speaker 3: but I've heard of them. It's like certain places do
Speaker 3: drive throughs. I think maybe Starbucks would do this where
Speaker 3: they will create it's like a whip cream type treat
Speaker 3: in a cup that you get for your dog that's
Speaker 3: riding in the car with you, and you give it
Speaker 3: to them and they lick up all the cream. And
Speaker 3: even the best thing I came across while doing this
Speaker 3: was dog beer. All right, people don't feed your dog's
Speaker 3: real beer. It's not good for dogs. They shouldn't have alcohol.
Speaker 3: But there are fully marketed dog beers sold in cans
Speaker 3: that look like beer cans. For example, Bush Dog Brew.
Speaker 3: It's not beer, there's no alcohol in it. Instead, it's
Speaker 3: like a meat broth thing with such you know, this
Speaker 3: is like turkey broth with sweet potatoes in it or something.
Speaker 3: And I think stuff like this appeals to people because
Speaker 3: it allows you to bring the dog in. You know,
Speaker 3: these are not just like things we consume for nutrition.
Speaker 3: You're not going out for ice cream or drinking beer
Speaker 3: for nutritional value. It's like a social ritual that you
Speaker 3: do with friends or that you do with family. And
Speaker 3: because people increasingly see their dogs as a friend or
Speaker 3: as part of the family, you feel like you need
Speaker 3: to include them in these, you know, consume consumptive social rituals.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. Another big one I'm to understand is if
Speaker 2: you have a birthday party for a dog, you want
Speaker 2: a dog birthday cake. Like, just a mile and a
Speaker 2: half from me, there is a dedicated dog bakery. I've
Speaker 2: driven past it a million times, but I had to
Speaker 2: look at their website for the first time, and sure enough,
Speaker 2: you can just straight up birthday cakes for dogs. Dog
Speaker 2: friendly birthday cakes, as you pointed out, but still like
Speaker 2: full blown birthday cakes. And as I was researching this episode,
Speaker 2: I was just seeing like dog biscuits and fancy dog
Speaker 2: treats everywhere. Like I went into a coffee shop and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, man, there are as many dog
Speaker 2: treats in here as there are human treats. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean I assume they were human treats. Maybe those are
Speaker 2: dog treats too, Maybe I was in the wrong establishment.
Speaker 2: But my espresso did not taste of turkey broths, so
Speaker 2: I guess it was all right.
Speaker 3: Before our dog passed away a few years ago, you know,
Speaker 3: he was like many dogs and that he would eat
Speaker 3: basically anything, so it was sometimes hard to distinguish, like
Speaker 3: what the really highly desired foods are, because it's all
Speaker 3: highly desired unless it's I remember, I guess one time
Speaker 3: I dropped a klipino pepper on the floor and he
Speaker 3: picked it up in his mouth and took a bite
Speaker 3: and then just kind of dropped it. So he never
Speaker 3: wanted that. But you eat almost anything else, I mean,
Speaker 3: whatever he found out on a walk, you know, to
Speaker 3: discarded chicken bones, that's delicious, of course, But he really
Speaker 3: loved carrots.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well we'll get into the really
Speaker 2: fascinating history of the changing dietary habits of the domesticated dog.
Speaker 2: But I guess we should again point out what is
Speaker 2: a biscuit a dog biscuit in the modern sense. Again,
Speaker 2: we're talking about a dry, hard, generally flower based biscuit,
Speaker 2: and we should point out that we're, of course, when
Speaker 2: we say biscuit, we're really lean more towards the the
Speaker 2: British use of the term biscuit, which is like a cookie,
Speaker 2: as opposed to biscuits in the US and parts of Canada,
Speaker 2: where it is like a fluffier quick bread. Though if
Speaker 2: you ask dogs they'll be like, give me the fluffy
Speaker 2: quick bread. I will also eat that. Now, as we've
Speaker 2: been pointing out, the dog biscuit is generally not considered
Speaker 2: the primary food source. It's an extra, it's the dessert,
Speaker 2: like to your point, part of the bonding process between
Speaker 2: a contemporary dog person and their dog. It's not altogether necessary.
Speaker 2: The domestic dog is a meat leaning, opportunistic omnivore. They
Speaker 2: lean meat eater and meat scavenger. But due to their
Speaker 2: long association with human beings, the human beings that domesticated them,
Speaker 2: they've acquired the genes necessary for increased starch consumption. So
Speaker 2: in other words, they've adapted to eat human scraps, human
Speaker 2: table scraps, they've come to cast off bits of vegetables,
Speaker 2: especially things like lagoons, grains, and of course that towering
Speaker 2: human food technology bread. A reminder here, we've talked about
Speaker 2: bread plenty of times on the show before. In the
Speaker 2: invention of bread, if you will, bread actually predates human agriculture.
Speaker 2: One hundred gatherers made bread in the neighborhood of like
Speaker 2: fourteen thousand years ago. Dog domestication is even older than this,
Speaker 2: dating back depending on how you're crunching the numbers, what
Speaker 2: twenty thousand to forty thousand years. And of course this
Speaker 2: is another reason that the idea of the invention of
Speaker 2: the dog biscuit, or really any dedicated dog chow might
Speaker 2: seem like something without anything besides twentieth century roots, right,
Speaker 2: because these are creatures that have adapted over time to
Speaker 2: just eat what we are eating, or eat what we
Speaker 2: didn't eat. But along the way these treats emerge for
Speaker 2: different reasons. But also I think it's worth acknowledging throughout
Speaker 2: this history you can still identify some of the same reasons,
Speaker 2: or you can easily imagine some version of that same
Speaker 2: bond that a contemporary dog person has that you could
Speaker 2: you know, you can compare to someone in the ancient world.
Speaker 3: Even yeah, even if these ancient peoples had a much
Speaker 3: more working relationship with their dogs than most modern people
Speaker 3: do with companion dogs, I think you can still kind
Speaker 3: of see the beginnings of this long road that ends
Speaker 3: up with pup cups and dog beer if you look
Speaker 3: at some of the early evidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so again, domesticated dogs have had the chance
Speaker 2: to munch down on some bread of some sort for
Speaker 2: a very long time. But the question that really underlines
Speaker 2: the topic here today is how long have humans been
Speaker 2: making bread for dogs, perhaps exclusively for dogs. And we
Speaker 2: have a few different avenues to take here. So first
Speaker 2: of all, what do we have in the way of
Speaker 2: physical evidence of domesticated dogs that had a based diet.
Speaker 3: That's a great question, and of course it is important
Speaker 3: to separate the question of whend were domestic dogs consuming
Speaker 3: a grain based diet versus looking at specifically engineered dog
Speaker 3: bread products, because sometimes you can't tell from the evidence
Speaker 3: exactly what the product would have been, but you can
Speaker 3: infer some things about it. So I was reading about
Speaker 3: this in a twenty twenty one article in the Journal
Speaker 3: of World Prehistory called Dogs that ate plants Changes in
Speaker 3: the canine diet during the Late Bronze Age and First
Speaker 3: Iron Age in the Northeast Iberian Peninsula. This was by
Speaker 3: a number of authors. The lead author is Sylvia Albizouri.
Speaker 3: At least some of the authors here are affiliated with
Speaker 3: the University of Barcelona. So this study looked at skeletal
Speaker 3: remains of several dozen domestic dogs found buried at a
Speaker 3: site in northeastern Spain called con Roquetta, which is near
Speaker 3: the modern city of Barcelona. The konrachetasite has been inhabited
Speaker 3: by different human groups since prehistoric times, and by studying
Speaker 3: the different layers of deposition there we can learn a
Speaker 3: lot about changes in human life in the Iberian Peninsula
Speaker 3: over the centuries. So the bones the authors studied here
Speaker 3: were from different time periods, ranging from the Late Bronze
Speaker 3: Age to the First Iron Age, and this would be
Speaker 3: roughly the period from thirteen hundred to five point fifty BCE.
Speaker 3: And then by using isotopic analysis of the bones, the
Speaker 3: authors were able to learn about what the dogs were
Speaker 3: primarily eating, and then compare that data to other remains
Speaker 3: found in the same strata. And this type of analysis
Speaker 3: works because different food sources result in different concentrations of
Speaker 3: stable isotopes in the bone, c isotopes like carbon thirteen
Speaker 3: and nitrogen fifteen. And then so you look at that
Speaker 3: and you find the ratios of different atomic nuclei in
Speaker 3: the bones, and that can tell you what fed the
Speaker 3: growth of the animal's body hundreds or even thousands of
Speaker 3: years ago. So it's cool technique. So what they found was,
Speaker 3: despite the fact that dogs evolved from carnivorous predators, you know,
Speaker 3: they're evolved from mostly carnivorous wolves, these dogs living alongside
Speaker 3: humans from the Bronze Age to the First Iron Age,
Speaker 3: with a few exceptions, were already getting a large proportion
Speaker 3: of their dietary protein from vegetarian sources, specifically grains. So,
Speaker 3: for example, the Bronze Age dogs were eating mostly what
Speaker 3: are called C three cereals that include cereals like wheat
Speaker 3: and barley, so they're probably eating a lot of barley.
Speaker 3: The later dogs seem to have been getting a greater
Speaker 3: proportion of what are called seaf four grains like millet.
Speaker 3: Now there were a few exceptions. This finding does not
Speaker 3: mean the dogs ate zero animal protein. Later dogs tended
Speaker 3: to show more diversity in diet than the earlier Bronze
Speaker 3: Age dogs, which may be a result of more social
Speaker 3: and labor based diversification within the human cultures there. So,
Speaker 3: for example, there's one cluster of dogs they identified that
Speaker 3: the authors call Group three. I think that seem to
Speaker 3: have eaten significantly more meat than all of the other groups,
Speaker 3: and the authors speculate that this could be because these
Speaker 3: dogs were involved in different types of human labor assistance
Speaker 3: or lifestyle. So we don't know exactly what caused this difference.
Speaker 3: This is just me extrapolating, but imagine you've got most
Speaker 3: of the dogs in a culture living nearby the human
Speaker 3: settlement and eating these grain based foods. I'll talk more
Speaker 3: about that in a second. But then you have the
Speaker 3: other subset of dogs who are involved in helping humans
Speaker 3: with hunting or with long distance travel. So this could
Speaker 3: be part of a sort of military class, or as
Speaker 3: companions to people involved in trade long distance travel for
Speaker 3: trade or for gathering materials of some kind. So these
Speaker 3: dogs would travel around and exist more maybe on hunting
Speaker 3: and foraging, or maybe just they would be fed what
Speaker 3: the humans were eating while traveling, and humans while traveling
Speaker 3: might be subsisting more on you know, freshly hunted game
Speaker 3: or something. So, whatever the reason, these dogs have a
Speaker 3: more diverse diet or they're eating more meats, whereas most
Speaker 3: dogs at can Rokatta over the ages stay close to
Speaker 3: the human settlement and eat grain based foods. So this
Speaker 3: dog you know, almost vegetarianism or semi vegetarianism appears to
Speaker 3: be not a result of dogs foraging for human scraps
Speaker 3: and all that's left over as grains, but instead, the
Speaker 3: authors argue it's evidence of a deliberate feeding regime controlled
Speaker 3: by humans. And as evidence of this, the authors point
Speaker 3: to consistency in the values of these nutritional inputs, which
Speaker 3: they interpret to mean that humans were preparing their dog's food. So,
Speaker 3: when we think about the evolution of domestic dogs from
Speaker 3: their wild ancestors, sometimes this dietary adaptation of dogs, you
Speaker 3: know that coming from a carnivorous evolutionary heritage and moving
Speaker 3: into a more flexible omnivorous diet. Sometimes this is presented
Speaker 3: as a pure accident of evolution that nobody planned, you know,
Speaker 3: like proto dog. The story often goes that proto dogs
Speaker 3: ate scraps leftover from human hunter gatherers, and the ones
Speaker 3: that were behaviorally more compatible with proximity to humans and
Speaker 3: metabolically more coll a rent of human food, these would
Speaker 3: have a survival advantage, and they began to branch off
Speaker 3: from their wild ancestors. But at least within the prehistoric
Speaker 3: Bronze Age Iberian setting. Here, the exposure to an omnivorous
Speaker 3: diet is no longer an accident. At this point. It's
Speaker 3: not just that the dogs are eating whatever's around and
Speaker 3: that's forcing them to adapt to a more omnivorous diet,
Speaker 3: because the dogs don't seem to be just getting leftovers
Speaker 3: of whatever the humans happened to be eating. The humans
Speaker 3: seem to have been fully feeding the dogs a deliberate
Speaker 3: grain heavy diet even when the humans were eating other things.
Speaker 3: And now that's interesting, why would they do that? While
Speaker 3: the authors talk about how, you know, these were not pets,
Speaker 3: obviously they were working dogs, so they'd be involved in
Speaker 3: all kinds of tasks like animal herding would be a
Speaker 3: big thing, or you know, sometimes they were used for
Speaker 3: moving loads, you know, moving loads across the ground on
Speaker 3: sledges of some kind, whatever the they're doing. You don't
Speaker 3: want your working dogs to be distracted from their work
Speaker 3: trying to run off and forage for food because they're hungry.
Speaker 3: So it kind of makes sense to stuff them with
Speaker 3: calorie dense, abundant, grain based foods so they have plenty
Speaker 3: of energy and they're not tempted to stray from tasks
Speaker 3: to go get a bite to eat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if that bite to eat might be the
Speaker 2: animals they're hurting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even worse. Yeah, So I don't know. Interesting in
Speaker 3: this context that you go back three thousand years ago
Speaker 3: in the Iberian Peninsula and people are feeding their dogs.
Speaker 3: It's not necessarily going to be milk bones, but they're
Speaker 3: feeding them some kind of grain based food as a
Speaker 3: core staple of their diet and doing so deliberately.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, really fascinating. Again, the roots here digging far
Speaker 2: deeper into the past than I anticipated. Now at this point,
Speaker 2: we're going to fast forward a bit and we're going
Speaker 2: to we're going to move to the ancient Romans. Generally,
Speaker 2: we're gonna be looking at the imperial era here. First,
Speaker 2: I thought we might consider this line from the Roman
Speaker 2: poet Juvenile from his second century CE work Satire five.
Speaker 2: I shall read it here for you is a dinner
Speaker 2: worth all the insults with which you have to pay
Speaker 2: for It is your hunger so importunate. That means troublesomely urgent,
Speaker 2: when it might, with greater dignity be shivering where you
Speaker 2: are and munching dirty scraps of dog's bread.
Speaker 3: So juvenile? Is Chriswell? Am I getting that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Chriswell predicts, Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Here's predicting in
Speaker 2: a way, right, talking about dog bread a Pannis Canarius.
Speaker 2: So what is he talking about here? Will? I had
Speaker 2: to dig into this a little bit more. And what
Speaker 2: he's to here is at once actually bread for dogs,
Speaker 2: but also maybe not quite bread cooked just for dogs.
Speaker 2: According to Consuelo Manetta in Our Daily Bread in Italy,
Speaker 2: it's meaning in the Roman period and today this is
Speaker 2: a material culture of twenty sixteen. Bread making technologies reached
Speaker 2: a high point of production during the Roman Imperial period,
Speaker 2: so there were a great many different bread products, including
Speaker 2: different breads for soldiers and sailors, such as you know,
Speaker 2: hard tack like product, high quality breads, breads with clay
Speaker 2: added and also bread for dogs.
Speaker 3: I love the bread with clay added.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I didn't. I didn't have time to follow
Speaker 2: that tangent. But I mean, you know, things have been
Speaker 2: added to bread throughout history to sort of bulk it up,
Speaker 2: to make up for lack of ingredients and so forth.
Speaker 2: So the general idea, though here alluded to by Juvenal,
Speaker 2: is that there were different types of due to where
Speaker 2: they stood in the bread making process and then what
Speaker 2: social classes were given to dine on them. Dog bread
Speaker 2: was the lowest quality bread possible made as a byproduct,
Speaker 2: you know, from the scraps that were left over from
Speaker 2: the milling process, so namely brand and husks, and was
Speaker 2: generally considered suitable only for dogs and was apparently fed
Speaker 2: to dogs. Like it's not just a situation where it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: only a dog could eat that, but humans do. Like
Speaker 2: this was also bread that was given expressly to dogs.
Speaker 3: That sounds like health food now, right, wouldn't this be
Speaker 3: high fiber?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, and that that is that's where we're going
Speaker 2: with this. Yeah, really, this is where we come back
Speaker 2: to this idea of like working dogs deserving a working
Speaker 2: dog's meal. But then also it gets into very there
Speaker 2: are various class attributes to it as well. So here's
Speaker 2: a quote from another work. This is from Marcus Tarentius
Speaker 2: Varro's on Agriculture, and the author writes a lot about
Speaker 2: the upkeep of a farm and all the stuff that
Speaker 2: goes into it, talks a good bit about dogs working dogs,
Speaker 2: and at one point writes quote, the food of dogs
Speaker 2: is more like that of man than that of sheep.
Speaker 2: They eat scraps of meat and bones, not grass and leaves.
Speaker 2: But then he later says you should also feed them
Speaker 2: barley bread, but not without soaking it in milk, for
Speaker 2: when they have become accustomed to eating that kind of food,
Speaker 2: they will not soon stray from the flock.
Speaker 3: M Okay, So you give the dog good food to eat,
Speaker 3: yummy food, bread soaked in milk, it's not gonna run away.
Speaker 2: Right right, And it's not going to bite your flock
Speaker 2: and so forth. And the bread he's advising to be
Speaker 2: soaked in milk would be the aforementioned dog bread. Now
Speaker 2: another take on bread and dogs in the Roman world.
Speaker 2: I was reading in Around the Roman Table, Food and
Speaker 2: Feasting in Ancient Rome. This is by Patrick Fass. He
Speaker 2: points out that when you were having like a fancy,
Speaker 2: upper class theatrical Roman dinner. After the main course, like
Speaker 2: before dessert, bread is passed around for guests to wipe
Speaker 2: their mouths and hands, and then given to the dogs
Speaker 2: quote who were dedicated to Hecate, the goddess of night
Speaker 2: and witchcraft. So bread here used just as like a
Speaker 2: precursor to the napkin or a napkin substitute, and then
Speaker 2: given to the dogs, who will gladly eat it because
Speaker 2: it is bread, and it also maybe has a little
Speaker 2: extra fun flavoring based on whatever was on your hands
Speaker 2: and on your mouth.
Speaker 3: This is interesting because the use of bread as napkins here,
Speaker 3: which I don't think I was aware of this before,
Speaker 3: but it reminds me of the widespread use of bread
Speaker 3: products as essentially plates or other you know what we
Speaker 3: would use plates for today. You know the idea of
Speaker 3: the trencher that you'd eat food out of a big
Speaker 3: piece of stale bread, and then afterwards you might throw
Speaker 3: that bread to the dogs or maybe to the poor
Speaker 3: in some contexts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And in this case especially the bread that
Speaker 2: you're using is of course maybe not ideal for human consumption,
Speaker 2: but the dogs are game. I was reading Bread and
Speaker 2: Bones Feeding Roman Dogs published in Classical World twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one by Sarah M. Harvey, and she gets into a
Speaker 2: good bit of this, and some of her key points
Speaker 2: are that, first of all, providing a plan diet to
Speaker 2: your dog, generally like a working dog, a hunting dog,
Speaker 2: a guard dog, a sheep dog was a status symbol.
Speaker 2: Like here, I am an elite owner of an elite dog,
Speaker 2: and it's an extension of my place in society that
Speaker 2: I give my dog what is considered a proper diet,
Speaker 2: the kind of diet that is written about. It works
Speaker 2: like on agriculture, so my dog is where well cared for,
Speaker 2: well fed, and fed on a regular schedule. That's something
Speaker 2: that she stresses as well. Meanwhile, that doesn't mean every
Speaker 2: dog in the Roman Imperial Roman world is eating like
Speaker 2: this common dogs. They're going to maybe be fed more
Speaker 2: on table scraps. But dog bread was thought to be ideal,
Speaker 2: especially again for working dogs, dogs that need a lot
Speaker 2: of energy to do whatever they're doing. Dogs that you
Speaker 2: want to look very healthy and robust in the case
Speaker 2: of a guard dog, but also but not like fat
Speaker 2: and lazy. You want the dog to be a little
Speaker 2: bit intimidating. I guess, so the ideal was a grain
Speaker 2: heavy diet, but she points out that evidence suggests that
Speaker 2: dog diets at the time had a high level of
Speaker 2: animal protein, and this might have been due in part
Speaker 2: to availability, so you know, you would still have meat
Speaker 2: on hand post hunt, post butchery activities, but also it
Speaker 2: might have been just the place where experience and tradition
Speaker 2: meet literary ideals. So there's there's what was recommended and
Speaker 2: what was you know, the ideal dog meal. But then
Speaker 2: in reality there's still going to be a certain amount
Speaker 2: of feeding the scraps to the dogs, and it's going
Speaker 2: to be different depending on, you know, what level of society. Now,
Speaker 2: another source that I looked at was a melting pot
Speaker 2: of Roman dogs north of the Alps with high phenotypic
Speaker 2: and genetic diversity and similar diets by Granado at All.
Speaker 2: This was in scientific reports from twenty twenty three and
Speaker 2: it indicates that there are quote numerous archaeological, epigraphic and
Speaker 2: literary evidence for dog food in the Roman Empire that
Speaker 2: show a large proportion of vegetable components cereals, bread made
Speaker 2: of barley, wheat or spelt, and a minor component of meat, bones, milk,
Speaker 2: and whey. But they also point out it is known
Speaker 2: that the Romans were feeding their dogs differently according to
Speaker 2: a number of factors, including function and age, but most
Speaker 2: likely the majority of Roman dogs were relying primarily on
Speaker 2: table scraps. So again, there's the ideal, and there's like
Speaker 2: sort of the high class, you know, elite diet for
Speaker 2: the dogs, and then there's what is maybe the reality
Speaker 2: just throughout dog owning culture at the time in the area.
Speaker 3: But it sounds to me like you're saying that even
Speaker 3: in the Roman context, while we did have these prescriptions
Speaker 3: for certain ways to prepare grain based or bread products
Speaker 3: for dogs that were thought of as ideal, these would
Speaker 3: not be mass produced dog biscuits like we think of today.
Speaker 2: This would be just a byproduct of the breadmaking industry
Speaker 2: that was at large in the area at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: to really find the origin of like the modern industrial
Speaker 2: specified dog biscuit, we have a very specific origin story,
Speaker 2: which is always nice, especially for covering on a show,
Speaker 2: and it's a Victorian innovation. Generally, most sources point to
Speaker 2: a singular Victorian innovator, and that is James Spratt. He
Speaker 2: was a British born American inventor and entrepreneur, and generally,
Speaker 2: from what I was reading, just a great salesman, great marketer.
Speaker 2: And he was at the time he was traveling a
Speaker 2: back and forth between America and England at the time,
Speaker 2: selling his own patented lightning rods. And the story goes
Speaker 2: that he was in he was in England, he was,
Speaker 2: you know, at the docks, and he saw some dogs
Speaker 2: eating some hardtack. I guess some sailors gave them some
Speaker 2: of this, you know, the hard bits of bread that
Speaker 2: are meant for rations. The dogs were loving it, and
Speaker 2: he had this epiphany, I should make bread just for
Speaker 2: dogs and market it as such, And in eighteen sixty
Speaker 2: he started doing it. The product Sprats Meat fibrine dog Cake,
Speaker 2: with the target audience being English sporting dogs, or rather
Speaker 2: the owners of fine English sporting dogs. So already it's
Speaker 2: fascinating how that lines up with so many different things
Speaker 2: we're talking about here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so appealing to the owners who think that their
Speaker 3: dog is special and that this product will cater to
Speaker 3: the specialness of their animal.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, yeah, it is an elite, an elite and
Speaker 2: specialized diet for special dogs. And there's prestige tied up
Speaker 2: into it and everything. So I was reading an article
Speaker 2: about this from the Hagley Museum and Library, and they
Speaker 2: point out that that Spratt was just a masterful marketer
Speaker 2: on this, successfully selling a product that, to be clear,
Speaker 2: people didn't actually need, like the dogs, the dogs.
Speaker 3: That people weren't like, what am I going to feed
Speaker 3: my dog?
Speaker 2: Right? Like, yeah, we'd figured. I'm not saying that dogs
Speaker 2: necessarily had the best diet in all cases, but a
Speaker 2: certain equilibrium had been attained, and so the dogs at
Speaker 2: the time, they say, were probably eating mostly take table scraps.
Speaker 2: It seemed to work out. But he pushed this really hard,
Speaker 2: like he was traveling around presenting this. At the eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy six Centennial Exhibition in the US, he presented that
Speaker 2: he sold it to the American Kennel Club and reportedly
Speaker 2: introduced the idea there were appropriate foods for different dog
Speaker 2: life stages. Now, I think maybe the Romans had some
Speaker 2: version of this as well, And I think in general,
Speaker 2: if you were feeding a very old dog as opposed
Speaker 2: to a young dog, you might at some point realize, well,
Speaker 2: maybe they do need something different, at least structurally. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the idea is that he like just really dug into this,
Speaker 2: and it was like, Yeah, there's a market for this,
Speaker 2: and then I can expand that market and I can
Speaker 2: go after different sorts of clientele. Now you can look
Speaker 2: up there's all there. You know, this is an age
Speaker 2: from which we have a number of surviving advertisements. You
Speaker 2: can find images of what these biscuits looked like. I
Speaker 2: recommend them. I mean, I recommend checking out the advertisements. Again,
Speaker 2: I cannot speak for the dog cakes, the historic dog cakes,
Speaker 2: but you can look up images of them, and they
Speaker 2: did not look like bones. They looked more like a biscuit,
Speaker 2: you know, like an English biscuit, like some sort of
Speaker 2: a big square cookie type thing.
Speaker 3: I bet the dogs didn't mind.
Speaker 2: No, no, they present Probably they love them. But more
Speaker 2: to the point, the humans that had the dogs loved them. Now,
Speaker 2: when it comes to the dog bone shape, like the
Speaker 2: popularity of that that also seems to have a specific
Speaker 2: origin story, or at least there's one that's the moment
Speaker 2: that's fairly popular. And I was reading about this in
Speaker 2: an article by Michael Waters, an Atlas Obscura article titled
Speaker 2: how an organic chemist invented the bone shaped dog treat
Speaker 2: from twenty seventeen and it takes us to nineteen oh
Speaker 2: seven and organic chemist Carlton ellis an American inventor who
Speaker 2: was also involved in the creation of both margarine and polyester.
Speaker 3: Two of my favorite things.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, this one isn't I guess mentioned as much,
Speaker 2: but like I think margarine and polyester his contributions. They
Speaker 2: are a little more famous. But he was supposedly called
Speaker 2: in to help a local slaughterhouse with its waist milk
Speaker 2: problem and came up with a dog biscuit byproduct based
Speaker 2: on said waste. The problem dogs didn't really want to
Speaker 2: eat them when they started producing these things prototypes presenting
Speaker 2: them to the dogs, and the story goes that on
Speaker 2: a whim they tried shaping them like a bone, and well,
Speaker 2: suddenly the dogs love them. The milk bone was born
Speaker 2: and was purchased by Nibisco in nineteen thirty one, promoted
Speaker 2: as a dessert for dogs.
Speaker 3: I'm skeptical at several levels. Mean, the dogs didn't want them.
Speaker 3: As I've said before, in my experience, most dogs are
Speaker 3: not very picky. I mean, they'll eat almost anything, and
Speaker 3: so I don't know what would have to be wrong
Speaker 3: with it for them not to want to eat it.
Speaker 3: But then also so they didn't change the taste, they
Speaker 3: just changed the shape, and then the dogs wanted them.
Speaker 2: That is the story.
Speaker 3: Now, color me skeptically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think they're or maybe a few things
Speaker 2: going on here. First of all, if this were an
Speaker 2: embellishment of the origin of a particular invention, it would
Speaker 2: not be the first. I mean, sometimes invention stories are
Speaker 2: tweaked a little bit to give it a little more
Speaker 2: of a story shape. Suddenly something that is just the
Speaker 2: you know, the byproduct of just trying different things, becomes
Speaker 2: inspiration from a dream and so forth. So it's possible
Speaker 2: that this is just a more fun version of what
Speaker 2: actually happened. It's also been pointed out that it could
Speaker 2: be the novelty factor they have. You know, who knows
Speaker 2: how many There may be more data on this out there,
Speaker 2: and I just didn't run across it, you know, however
Speaker 2: many dogs we had. They're being presented with different examples
Speaker 2: of the biscuit, and then here's one that's shaped like
Speaker 2: a bone. It could just be that it's a novel shape.
Speaker 2: Dogs are curious and intelligent. They were like, what is this?
Speaker 2: It looks different from the others, and then they were like, wow,
Speaker 2: he loves it. He loves the dog shape. We're going
Speaker 2: with that.
Speaker 3: You mean the bone shape?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sorry. Not the dogs that would be though,
Speaker 2: that would also make sense. That's the kind of thing
Speaker 2: that that humans would go for as well. He knew
Speaker 2: that it was shaped like himself, and so he ate it.
Speaker 2: He knew it was for him that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: But because you are what you eat, it meant he
Speaker 3: wanted to become, come into himself and become the dog
Speaker 3: he always dreamed.
Speaker 2: He could be. Yeah, canine philosophy one on one. But
Speaker 2: but no, I think we could all acknowledge that, like
Speaker 2: the true genius of this is that it appealed to
Speaker 2: the humans. Like the treat is shaped like a bone.
Speaker 2: Dogs need a bone, dogs want to bone, And this
Speaker 2: is something that is this is an industrial product, but
Speaker 2: then it is shaped like this natural thing. I mean,
Speaker 2: the same thing works on us, right, I mean there
Speaker 2: are products where we take the mag that's an example,
Speaker 2: or I don't know, like even things that don't make
Speaker 2: a lot of sense, like a little you know, sort
Speaker 2: of like cheese snack shape it like a goldfish. Suddenly
Speaker 2: it's exciting suddenly it has this natural world component and
Speaker 2: it feel like something that you would of course want
Speaker 2: to eat and not something that you would just like,
Speaker 2: you know, pelt other children with.
Speaker 3: I remember vividly when I was a young child getting
Speaker 3: really excited for a super Mario shaped ice cream treat. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like Mario head, And I think, can this be true?
Speaker 3: Like his nose was a gumball. I don't know, did
Speaker 3: that come from a dream? That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: You don't follow gum Maybe so I mean they I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I loved there were some ice pops when
Speaker 2: I was a kid that were shaped like the different
Speaker 2: They weren't like it wasn't a universal monster's official product,
Speaker 2: but they was like they were shaped like a mummy
Speaker 2: and a vampire and so forth, And of course I
Speaker 2: loved that. Now, like even today, it's like you you know,
Speaker 2: you see a SpongeBob SquarePants ice ice cream pop. You know,
Speaker 2: the taste does not I'm assuming the taste profile is
Speaker 2: not something I would dig. But you can tell my
Speaker 2: children go crazy for it because we have taken this
Speaker 2: you know, highly processed thing and made it look like
Speaker 2: a beloved character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my daughter can absolutely taste that this cracker is
Speaker 3: shaped like mickey. Yeah, it's just mickey. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So so again, any way you cut it, though, I think
Speaker 2: it comes down to a brilliant marketing on the part
Speaker 2: of the milk bone architects here, and it's one that's
Speaker 2: still with us. It just, I don't know, it just
Speaker 2: feels right. As a non dog owner, there's just I
Speaker 2: can say that it just feels right that a dog
Speaker 2: should have a treat that is shaped like a bone.
Speaker 2: It's almost like, on some level we realize that maybe,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe in a way, the dog shouldn't be
Speaker 2: eating a highly industrial bread product.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we feel guilty about their level of domestication, the
Speaker 3: fact that we're feeding them something that doesn't seem like
Speaker 3: part of their natural diet. They should be running down
Speaker 3: an elk and you know process you're just chewing through
Speaker 3: its corpse. But we can leave he ate some of
Speaker 3: that feeling of guilt by giving them this highly processed
Speaker 3: grain based or milk protein product that is, you know,
Speaker 3: shaped like a like the part of a dead animal
Speaker 3: that they really desire.
Speaker 2: I think we should lean into this more that we
Speaker 2: should go beyond the bone. We should have it shaped
Speaker 2: like elk skulls, you know, you know, big chunks of
Speaker 2: rib and so forth. Someone has probably already done this.
Speaker 3: Guts like freets that are shaped like guts and organs.
Speaker 2: Three day old rotting guts, you know, something the dog
Speaker 2: would really want to get into.
Speaker 3: You know, really, the milk bone makes a lot more
Speaker 3: sense than the micrib, because dogs, given the opportunity, a
Speaker 3: lot of dogs will eat bones. They'll crack them open,
Speaker 3: and you know they'll get the swallow pieces of them.
Speaker 3: Humans don't usually eat bones, I think. Is so I
Speaker 3: don't know, the mic rib is actually more mysterious.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, now, you know, I have to have to
Speaker 2: acknowledge here. I am. I'm a vegetarian, so I eat
Speaker 2: a lot of faux meats, and a lot of the
Speaker 2: faux meat experience is take plant, make plant feel and
Speaker 2: taste and look like meat. So I mean it's like
Speaker 2: I'm I'm doing the same thing to myself.
Speaker 3: As someone in a weird middle category who I do
Speaker 3: actually eat meat, but I also sometimes eat you know,
Speaker 3: imitation meats, and I find that the visual appearance actually
Speaker 3: makes a significant difference in the eating experience. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's you know, you hear people talk about in food
Speaker 3: science that that that site is, you know, a really
Speaker 3: important part of the eating experience, and sometimes you're inclined
Speaker 3: to doubt that, but I don't know, it's it's true.
Speaker 2: Like sometimes it's the only way you can go after it.
Speaker 2: Take imitation bacon for example, Listeners, perhaps I'm wrong, Perhaps
Speaker 2: there is a really good imitation bacon non the meat
Speaker 2: bacon bacon option. In my experience, however, no such thing exists.
Speaker 2: But the best we can do is we can make
Speaker 2: it look like bacon, and we can make it kind
Speaker 2: of like crisp like bacon in the same way, like
Speaker 2: we can go after the tactile experience and the visual
Speaker 2: experience of the bacon and at least try and get
Speaker 2: that part, even if the flavor profile is not quite
Speaker 2: there yet.
Speaker 3: How that compares to the bacon strips unclear.
Speaker 2: Now, if you're just discovering stuff to blow your mind,
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Speaker 3: We would love it, you know, so huge, thanks as
Speaker 3: always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you
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Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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