Can Humans Eat Dog Food?

1 Overview

Why eat it?

In a pinch, kibble can fill you up, even save your life.

We don’t endorse eat dog food for N days stunts; read on and you’ll see they’re mostly show.

Short term

Any owner who’s read labels knows formulas differ, but all are made for dogs, not for what eating them does to humans.

Short-term, no problem; long-term, some nutrients can harm you.

Vitamin K

Dogs need vitamin K; humans don’t. Safe for dogs, but long-term human intake can poison you.

Vitamin C

Dogs make vitamin C in the liver; humans only from food. So kibble has none – and human deficiency brings scurvy.

And the big one: food safety.

Some will say: foreign kibble is safer than local human food.

Many before the pandemic thought the grass was greener abroad.

But the pandemic showed abroad isn’t perfect. A little-known fact: the FDA recalls contaminated dog food almost monthly.

Why? Dog food isn’t made to human-food safety standards; it has its own, abroad and at home.

So equating foreign dog food with local human food safety is either foolish or malicious.