DISCLAIMER: This article is intended to be a brief overview of the viability of dog food as an emergency food source, and not a comprehensive guide to food safety or nutrition. Weigh the risks carefully before eating any food not intended for human consumption, and only do so when there is no safer alternative.
At the beginning of the COVID pandemic in April 2020, Regina Loicano lived in abject fear, holed up in her Upper East Side, New York, walkup. She was so afraid of getting sick that she didn’t dare leave her small apartment. She was convinced that deadly germs were everywhere. Three weeks later, what was left of her food was gone and she resorted to eating pet food. Soon, the thought of starvation outweighed her fears of COVID and she tried to make it to the store, but she was so weak, she had to return back to her home. “I’ve been eating cat food and cat chow,” she told her rescuers, “and not been able to leave the house.”
For most, the thought of consuming dog food voluntarily would cause a shudder of disgust, and although our pets are cute, charming, playful, and more a part of the family unit than some actual humans, dogs can be kind of gross. They’re often excited to snack on meat that would repulse us, and the food we slop out of a can into their bowls has a powerful smell of pungent offal meats that are especially appetizing to the dogs. But in a dire emergency, can people eat dog food and survive? Or, like drinking water from a questionable source, does it run the risk of worsening our condition?
Why Would You Eat Dog Food?
The last of your food is gone. You ate what you could before it rotted, and the cans of soup and packages of pasta were the last human food left in the house. In the back of the pantry sits a few cans of dog food, and desperation is a remarkable motivator. Starvation is a particularly uncomfortable way to die, and logically,
