Woman Eats Dog Food for a Month, Lives to Tell the Tale

Blame the movie Super Size Me for the fad of radical thirty-day diets that only serve to hammer home an already obvious point.

I mean, okay, so you ate McDonalds for a month and got sick and bloated. What do I take from this other than the fact that it’s unhealthy to eat nothing but McDonalds’s for thirty days?

Now a strange woman from Washington has embarked on a similar quest. Her aim? To prove that pet food is perfectly fine for human consumption. Or, wait... maybe she wanted to show that human food is made with unnatural ingredients? Hold on, is it just a marketing stunt for her pet food store?

Well, whatever: This woman ate dog food for a month.

Dorothy Hunter is the owner of Paws Natural Pet Emporium, a natural pet food vendor in Richland, Washington. Hunter and her associates claim the initiative was intended to raise awareness of “healthy pet food and ingredients.” While the campaign is certainly an effective marketing stunt (after all, we're writing about it and you're reading our article), it’s also pretty darn silly.

“In the news there’s been a lot about the bad food for humans,” Hunter explained on the store’s YouTube channel, specifically referencing the recent Hot Pocket recall. “We sell holistic, natural foods—good ingredients, USA products—at Paws Natural Pet Emporium. I believe in our products and how good they are; I actually believe our pets are eating better than us.”

According to Women’s Health, Hunter started eating dog food when she didn’t have time to eat at work. Sure, at my own job I've had several lunches of peanut butter and tea, or whatever else happened to be sitting next to my desk, but I think I'd order in some delivery before I'd make the leap to eating dog food.

Hunter claims to be more interested in raising awareness of food ingredients and labeling than promoting her own business. Many pet foods, she claims, are more naturally and sustainably produced than the processed stuff found in grocery aisles. And to be fair, there's some truth to that. Best of all, she seems to have a sense of humor about it.

"I'm even doing some canned cat food, one is a succulent chicken, and it actually tastes really good,” she told KNDO TV.

Women’s Health also consulted a registered dietician to get the scientific lowdown on the health ramifications of this unusual stunt. The expert's answer shouldn’t really surprise you:

“Yes, the ingredients listed in some pet foods may be wholesome and akin to real foods humans eat on a daily basis,” Jaclyn London, a clinical dietician at Mount Sinai Hospital, told the magazine. “But someone eating pet foods also runs a significant risk of contracting foodborne illness from eating foods not intended for the human gut.”

You don’t say!