People eating pet food

[SammySawdust]

According to the BBC some people are eating pet food due to the COL crisis. Really? Am I hopelessly out of touch? Why would anyone do that?

This is the photo of the spare god I had. I added other stuff for the kids to it after I'd already shared this.

I don't know what that proves though glass, you didn't give her dog food.

Of course food poverty exists. But pet food is expensive, and stories of people routinely eating it are largely clickbait for the middle classes.

No I didn't give her dog food but she was so overwhelmed by my freezer left overs that she burst out crying. THAT is desperate. I have no idea what she's been eating but I never ever want to be in the awful position where second hand, out of date, slightly freezer burned meat is enough to reduce me to full on sobbing.

People ARE desperate but in MN most are incredibly well insulated from it. You hear it all the time. "What about us in the squeezed middle? We work mega hard! ( and will have to tighten our belt while we carry on paying off our £400k mortgage, keep our amazing pension pot increasing and down grade our food from Waitrose to Sainsbury and have just one holiday this year). That is not suffering . I know children that have child wet feet every morning in school as their shoes have holes in. I know children that have never seen a dentist EVER as the single NHS one is over subscribed. I know parents that skip meals so their kids can eat. Swans and ducks have gone missing from our ponds and the local paper suggested People are actually killing them for food.

Of course those people would eat animal food if they had no alternatives. I already know that.

I can't believe you think they would have £5 in their pocket and go " ooooh, people food or dog food?" . They don't. They buy human food . But if you go to the food bank they often give you pet food if it's in stock and you have a dog. I buy dog food in bulk and If my dog died tomorrow id still have the food.

I don't believe it. The pet food is more expensive. It's not all fit for human consumption either.

I have some dog treats that I bought for my hamster (pure chicken) but my hamster has since died. My new gerbils don't eat it so I should really put it up on facebook for free. You see this a lot- someone's dog died and then you have lots of dog food left which you put up on facebook for free. As often pet deaths are unanticipated so the owner may have done a big shop for the pet very recently. It may be easier to get such things free as opposed to food. The spare food that people might have on the other hand would generally be out of date and destined for the bin

Except buying things in bulk is one of the first things you stop doing when you’re living with not enough money... you know it’s a false economy longterm, but you have to do it because you just can’t afford that initial outlay.

If the story was - people are padding out their pets food with their own because there isn’t enough money for both, that I’d believe.

But IMO, that’s someone assuming people eat pet food because there are jokes about it and going out to try and find the very few cases it might have happened.

When what tends to happen is that people make do with less and less food and spread what they should be having between other family members, children, pets, start not buying their portion at all to spend it on other things.

But - people slowly starving themselves is a less dramatic headline, so....

I know all of those things too, I'm not "squeezed middle" by any means - I'm more benefits Britain, on a severely deprived council estate.

That doesn't equate with people eating pet food though. The mothers' slowly starving while they feed their pets and DC first absolutely fits my experience though

There is a misunderstanding people are not buying dog food because they've run out of food, they are eating they're pets food when they have nothing left, I have a German shepherd I buy 10 - 25 kilo sacks(dry food), if I ran out of food and was starving I might start eating the dog food which lasts a long time by the way, not like tins, remember some people care more about their dogs than about themselves. Not everyone feeds their pets TINNED food, which is an assumption lots of people are making. Dry food is extremely common especially amongst people that keep big dog breeds.

Any pet food that is actually edible is bloody expensive, think £25/30 for 2kg.

I cannot believe anybody is tucking into a can of pedigree chum which is the cheap crap.

Its more common around here for people to give their dogs cheap rice or pasta because they can't afford pet food.

Same, everyone I know with a big dog feeds them rice

(Not just rice!)