7% of Japanese Eat Dog Food!?
- Filed under: Japan, News
- Date: May 24, 2008 23:19 JST
- Tags: Bizarre, Mass Media, Pets
7% of Japanese admit to eating dog food, according to a recent survey, we are told, though anyone doubting their culinary sensibilities will be relieved to hear it is a brand of dog food by Royal Appointment.
Dog, of course, is a Korean staple - at least, it was in more impoverished times - and the consequence of poor agricultural soil, although a recent survey revealed that seven per cent of Japanese respondents admitted to eating dog food, albeit a top-end brand associated with the British Royal Family.
Though of course, a little digging soon reveals the sordid truth of this matter. The claim is in fact drawn from the sensationalistic and misleading title of a pathetic link grubbing article, careful reading of which reveals we are dealing with a liberal reading of:
Q2: What sort of dog food do you usually buy? (Sample size=1,696, multiple answer)
Commercial ordinary dog food 78.1% Commercial premium dog food 23.3% Specially hand-made food 4.1% Same food as humans eat 7.1% Other 2.4%
Same food as humans eat?
An interesting, if underhand, way of promoting an otherwise totally uninteresting article of the demographics of dog food, coupled with superb journalistic rigour by the Telegraph leads to a first rate headline, which few, I think, could resist spinning into a provocatively titled article, making cunning use of an incompletely informative first paragraph: Itainews.
From the dog’s point of view, 7% of humans are eating the dog’s food before giving it the scraps, so I defend my headline as accurate-ish. The stuff about human-edible dog food by appointment to the Queen is true, though!
Whatever the accuracy of the headline, it was certainly an necessary evil to interest people in an article on dog food demographics…
Just to be clear, we all understand that the poll means 7% of humans feed dogs HUMAN food right? “Same food as humans” = steak, ribs, and ice cream.
So actually, 100% of humans eat dog food. Just not the kind made for dogs only.
Uh, wow. Dogs eat our food, common fact (commercial dogfood = expen$ive). But, us eating their food? maybe not, we have our own food KTNX. IN b4 dogfood-on-fast-food-menu?