A Dog's Dinner: What Should We Really Be Feeding Our Pets?

May 19, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

For millennia, dogs and cats ate what was around—table scraps, kitchen waste, and the occasional rodent. Then, in the late 1700s, London’s streets teemed with horse-drawn traffic, and when those horses broke down, they became pet food. Vendors called “cat meat men” sold boiled horse meat on skewers, and bakers started making dog biscuits modeled on the hardtack fed to sailors. By the 1960s, pet food manufacturers had a bigger problem than sourcing ingredients: they had to convince owners that the old way—scraps—was practically animal abuse. Today, the global pet food market is worth $140 billion, and the options range from kibble to sushi-grade salmon bowls. But what should we really be feeding our pets, and what does our choice cost the planet?

From Scraps to Science: How Kibble Took Over

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What you'll learn

1 (00:02) **The Pet Food Episode: Finally Here** - Cynthia and Claudia introduce the most-requested episode topic, with Claudia feeding her dog Una.
2 (01:35) **The Scale of Modern Pet Ownership** - Rachel Kelly and Michael Korrin lay out the staggering numbers of pets and the pet food industry.
3 (06:01) **Domestication: Cats vs. Dogs** - Emily Anthes explains how cats and dogs came to live with humans.
4 (07:25) **The Mystery of Dog Domestication** - Emily Anthes describes the scientific debate over when wolves became dogs.
5 (10:28) **First Dogs Were Multi-Talented "Swiss Army Knives"** - The early dogs were genetically similar but lived with distinct human societies.
6 (12:46) **From Table Scraps to the First Dog Biscuits** - The shift from home scraps to commercial pet food began in industrializing Britain.
7 (14:43) **The Rise of Breed Specialization and Sprat's Biscuits** - As dogs became family members and show animals, the first targeted commercial foods appeared.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

In millions of homes, humans aren’t the only creatures sitting down to dinner. So what's on the menu for pets—and what impact does it have on their health, as well as the environment? This episode, we go back thousands of years to figure out what our first furry friends ate, how that's changed over the years, and why. Is serving your dog raw meat and bones more ancestrally appropriate? Can cats be vegetarian? What goes into that dry, brown, extruded industrial kibble? This episode, Gastropod is getting tails wagging with a look at the what our four-legged friends should really be eating to stay healthy and happy. You'll have to sit, stay, and listen to find out what the best options are, for our pets and the planet!

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