I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but almost everybody feeds their pets food that’s good for them. They buy specifically formulated diets, and rarely feed junk food to their dogs, cats, birds, or other pets.
And this is triple true at the Zoo. Our animals literally eat better than people do. (Our nutritionist says “If we won’t eat it, we won’t feed it!” – Watch Cincinnati.com video on Cincinnati Zoo nutrition.)
That’s because for some weird, hard to explain reason, people very often eat the wrong things.
For example, I bet something like this happened when you were a kid. You were riding along in the family station wagon and your Mom caught you out of the corner of her eye feeding your dog a potato chip. Moms somehow know what’s going on at all times.
Of course, she immediately says, “Honey, please don’t feed snacks to the dog!”
As you eat another one, you ask, chewing with your mouth open, “Why not?”
Here’s the kicker – the answer always was something like, ‘Because it’s bad for their heart.” And the implied answer was, “So go ahead and eat them yourself.”
Of course, the real answer is that potato chips do not make good pet food. They are not made for dogs. But the funny thing is that dogs are omnivores that can eat darn near anything, and they are actually built to run all day long, so it matters less to them what they eat than it does a human.
And of course, with all the frying, processing, added fat, and salt, potato chips are in fact not good for you. So, what to do?
The answer is easy – EAT LIKE AN ANIMAL!