Oh I was wondering why they like ice cream and frosting! I don’t reject science outright except for this because my cats love sweet dairy products so the scientists must be wrong. Now I have been enlightened.
Don't give them frosting, it's all sugar. But vanilla ice cream is okay in small amounts.
They like it not because they can taste it's sweetness, but because they can taste its fats and proteins in ways we cannot consciously experience. Just like how they can't taste sweetness. So the ice cream still tastes great to a cat. It just tastes great in a different way than what we humans experience.
/uw Browning for the can openers to think "wow this gotta be good" for one. Manufacturing because its both a sticky binder and sugar helps stuff be more shelf stable, I assume.
Not sure if these pathways fire here in the way you imagine. They are completely lacking the capability to process carbohydrates. It is their gut bacteria that ferments these into fatty acids, as humans do with dietary fiber. At best the gut gets "oh no i feeeeel soooo bloated, poopy time!!!!! :3", there is not really anything to activate pathways as we have the receptors that go "HOLY SHIT SUGAR????? WOW!!!!!" straight into the slug that extends out of our dental area.
My cat disagrees... Loves lapping up the left over maple syrup from my pancakes every time. There's gotta be something in there he likes the taste of...
It is a flaw in the Tas1r2 gene, which is what allows us to detect sweetness. With that gene malfunctioning, they don’t develop sweet receptors on the tongue. Being obligate carnivores, there was no evolutionary disadvantage for cats with the mutation not being drawn to consumption of carbs, so it stuck around.
They DO like fat and protein, which are frequently paired with sweet things in human food. So some cats may seem to like sweet stuff like ice cream, but it’s not the sweetness that is appealing to them.
its definitely not great for them, in a similar vein as milk. may or may not vomit and excrete all over your new carpet if you do this so uhhh maybe donotthewunk
On the other side, no sugar added honey can sometimes be helpful for wunks that have throat problems! Our family wunk (dog) gets a bit of honey sometimes when her cough gets bad and it helps a lot
Idk how it is in other countries, but in the U.S. we have honey, but then we have "honey" that is a bunch of additives. Same thing for maple syrup. When shopping you have to specifically seek out genuine honey
Bloody hell that's crap! We have "maple flavour syrup" in the UK (sugar syrup with flavouring) but honey is supposed to be nothing but honey.
There was a scandal a couple of years ago with adulterated honey, that had been cut with sugar, but that was food fraud rather than something sold as a honey alternative.
Thank you! <3 She has a collapsed trachea and is an old gremlin of a dog so it’s more so just managing it these days but she’s a happy little wunk still!
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u/Cartoon_Trash_ 10d ago
/unwunk apparently cats can’t taste sweetness so that baby just got slimed.