Why do animals love chips? (9 photos)

In short, animals like chips for the same reasons that we enjoy them. No matter how you look at it, snacks are masters at tricking the brain!





First of all, animals enjoy the excess salt in chips. Not a single organism on the planet can exist without regular table salt. But it’s not so easy to get it outside the seas and oceans. Herbivores have a particularly hard time with this.



I wish chicks would look at me like that...

Some butterflies, for example, wipe away crocodile tears. There are special glands in the eyes of reptiles to remove excess salts from the body. Insects figured this out and began to drink a cocktail of essential microelements straight from their toothy snouts! And large herbivores regularly visit rock salt outcrops and over thousands of years have licked out entire caves in them! This is what happened in Africa, for example. For thousands of years, herds of elephants have been coming to salt places. As a result, they have formed a network of branched passages.





— Guess who it is: wandering around strange corners in search of salt. — A drug addict? — No, an elephant!

Predators also love salty things. They get their portion of sodium chloride from the blood of their prey and raw meat. But if there is no blood, salted potatoes will do too! As soon as the brain receives a signal about excess salt, it gives the command to release a decent portion of dopamine into the blood. The animal quickly forms a connection “chips = pleasure”.



One potato to rule them all.

In addition to the fact that the chips are salty, they are also meaty! Nowadays it is difficult to find snacks that do not contain the food additive E621, that is, sodium glutamate, in human language. Once I even came across it in the composition of salted chips, which surprised me a lot. From the point of view of manufacturers, this was the right move: glutamate enhances any taste, makes it deep and rich, and the aftertaste is more pleasant.



I'm gorging myself on chips to reduce my stress level. But will it help?

In 2002, scientists came to the conclusion that the sensations of monosodium glutamate are a separate taste, because we even have special receptors for its perception. This taste was called umami. And later it was discovered that these receptors are found in most mammals, many birds and some reptiles.



However, not all animals have good taste. Penguins, for example, do not feel umami, bitter, or sweet tastes.

The widespread distribution of umami receptors is very easy to explain. Glutamic acid and its salts are the building blocks of amino acids, which, in turn, are used to assemble proteins. And the more proteins in food, the more glutamates. Therefore, evolution has built special receptors with which we could determine healthy high-protein food and consider it tasty. And then people came up with the idea of ​​sprinkling lean potatoes with glutamate and deceiving the mechanism that formed tens of millions of years ago. And if you and I can still understand that there is no smell of protein in chips, then we cannot explain this to animals.



Contrary to popular belief, glutamate is practically harmless. It can cause health problems only if you eat it by the tablespoon. It is easier to die from poisoning with table salt.

Okay, I clearly went too far with the lean one - after all, this food is carbohydrate-rich, and also cooked with a lot of oil. And this, by the way, also has a positive effect on its attractiveness! During frying, fats oxidize and undergo hydrolysis, turning into aromatic (chemical name) and aromatic (to our and cats' taste) compounds.



A total of about 60 volatile compounds are responsible for the tempting smell of fried meat. My condolences to those who read the article on an empty stomach.

So it turns out that not the most important achievement of the food and biochemical industry hacks the pleasure system of our pets and hooks them on a potato needle. And this, in fact, is very bad. The gastrointestinal tract of animals is not adapted to such food at all and their ability to self-repair is depleted in a matter of years. Therefore, if you want to save your feathered and furry charges, buy them specialized treats!



This supply of potato gold will last the cat for all 9 lives. For 9 very short lives...