Monkey Chow Fact Sheet
Here's a link to all the Monkey Chow official stats (pdf). I note that the product description now specifies "non-human" primates. I swear to god that wasn't there before. In fairness to the company, it's not the kind of thing you should have to say.
Any biologists out there who can analyse the chow stats and comment on suitability for humans?
Any biologists out there who can analyse the chow stats and comment on suitability for humans?
36 Comments:
I am eating a Hot Dog.
I was a monkey's butler for nearly 5,000 monkeys at the local UC. Feeding, watering and cleaning poo for the monkeys.
Besides the bland looking monkey chow, monkeys would get fresh fruit: coconuts, bananas, grapes, and others of that ilk. Some fruit was hidden in balls so the monkeys would have to work to get it. Just to relieve monkey boredom. Oh, and sometimes candy from other employees.
Oh yeah, the outside monkeys would eat grass, so you should add grass to your diet.
There were no rocks to be had.
Police chase outside. The guy just hit a tree and ran off. I'm off to gawk.
The PDF says: "Most primates will readily accept ZuPreem Primate Diet Dry.
If the animal is reluctant to accept the diet, the biscuits can
be soaked in fruit juice to increase palatability or to improve
mouth feel."
Worth a try?
Dude 1st off you are the 2nd most hilarious person I have come across on the web, no site has mad me laugh out loud as much as yours has. The comment you made about the company shouldn't have to specify that "Monkey Chow" is not for humans had me cracking up.
BTW your boy Scooby who talked you into doing the monkey chow diet is THE most hilarious person I have come across on the web, just for talking you into this.
I have a ?uestion, and a comment... my ?uestion is has any one like a Jay Leno, or David Letterman contacted you about interviewing you on there show, I think you would be perfect for something like that.
My comment is, dude I know you say it's not, but I'm looking at the bag, and it looks to me like you got yourself the diet monkey chow.
The monkey chow looks to be suitable for human consumption and should fill most basic requirements for an extended period of time, if not permanently. However, this is not to say it is an optimal diet for either humans or non-human primates.
Many correctional facilities have turned to "nutritional loaves" to feed the inmates. Sometimes, this is the normal meal for an inmate; other times, it serves as a punishment. These loaves contain enough nutrients to sustain a human being but lack taste or a pleasing texture.
Perhaps you could try that next.
As others have pointed out, many zoos supplement their primates' diets with fresh fruit.
It is totally, incredibly amazing that they added "non-human" to the product description -- presumably because of the semantic hole raised by your experiment -- but you're right, it might have been the kind of thing better left unsaid. Way to go, angryman. Way to go.
You are a fucking hoot! This is definitely Letterman material, and I could see a mention of you on SNL's Weekend Update.
So this chow has lots of vitamins added, but it doesn't specify exact amounts. I also don't know how well RDA requirements are known for primates.
Good luck!
OMG, lol. This is totally cracking me up. I think what they are really saying by adding the "non-human" is that "we are not liable if you develop some sort of horrendous disease, go stark-raving-mad, or drop dead from eating this stuff." So what's the first thing you are going to eat when you get done with this?
i agree with agree with "smitty" who mentioned fruit for your monkey diet. that was one of the first things that my daughter mentioned as well. although, i know it would conflict with the not spending too much money thing. maybe someone could donate some.
why ever would you do all this in the first place? is it for purely scientific purposes, all purpose amusement, or for fame and fortune?
whatever the reason, it is hilarious and interesting to watch you go through it. perhaps, you should extend it. maybe you'll adapt to the food. a week is really not much time to change your eating habits and like it.
I applaud your bravery in the face of such awful food.
My teeth hurt now.
I just finished a five day fast to cleanse myself after binging on several illegal substances. Somewhere around day four (first 3 were a blur) I'd have given up a testicle for a bowl of monkey chow.
I'm interested in the long term effects this'll have on you, and for the sake of science implore you to extend your experiment to at least a month.
Maybe holding your nose while you chow down will help you get it down.
Hey, I just found out about your experiment via the link on J-walkblog.com. All I can say is, wow. Genius? Maybe that is too strong of a word, but definitely one of the funniest ideas I have seen in a long, long time.
Keep it up, you can do it!
Any plans on Zebra chow or anything like that in the future?
I don't know how much research you've done in regards to the nutritional content of the chow, but the fat itself may be derived from some pretty disgusting sources, it's animal/pet grade meat, not fit for human consumption:
"...Vegetable protein", the mainstay of dry dog foods, includes ground yellow corn, wheat shorts and middlings, soybean meal, rice husks, peanut meal and peanut shells (identified as "cellulose" on pet food labels). These often are little more than the sweepings from milling room floors. Stripped of their oil, germ and bran, these "proteins" are deficient in essential fatty acids, fat-soluble vitamins and antioxidants.
"Animal protein" in commercial pet foods can include diseased meat, roadkill, contaminated material from slaughterhouses, faecal matter, rendered cats and dogs and poultry feathers. The major source of animal protein comes from dead-stock removal operations that supply so-called "4-D" animals - dead, diseased, dying or disabled - to "receiving plants" for hide, fat and meat removal. The meat (after being doused with charcoal and marked "unfit for human consumption") may then be sold for pet food.
Rendering plants process decomposing animal carcasses, large roadkill and euthanised dogs and cats into a dry protein product that is sold to the pet food industry. One small plant in Quebec, Ontario, renders 10 tons (22,000 pounds) of dogs and cats per week. The Quebec Ministry of Agriculture states that "the fur is not removed from dogs and cats" and that "dead animals are cooked together with viscera, bones and fat at 115° C (235° F) for 20 minutes".
The US Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) is aware of the use of rendered dogs and cats in pet foods, but has stated: "CVM has not acted to specifically prohibit the rendering of pets. However, that is not to say that the practise of using this material in pet food is condoned by the CVM."
"To prevent condemned meat from being rerouted and used for human consumption, government regulations require that meat be "denatured" before removal from the slaughterhouse and shipment to rendering facilities. In my time as a veterinary meat inspector, we denatured with carbolic acid (a potentially corrosive disinfectant) and/or creosote (used for wood-preservation or as a disinfectant). Both substances are highly toxic. According to federal meat inspection regulations, fuel oil, kerosene, crude carbolic acid and citronella (an insect repellent made from lemon grass) are all approved denaturing materials.
Condemned livestock carcasses treated with these chemicals can become meat and bone meal for the pet food industry. Because rendering facilities are not government-controlled, any animal carcasses can be rendered - even dogs and cats. As Eileen Layne of the CVMA told the Chronicle, "When you read pet food labels, and it says "meat and bone meal", that's what it is: cooked and converted animals, including some dogs and cats."
"Some of these dead pets - those euthanised by veterinarians - already contain pentobarbital before treatment with the denaturing process. According to University of Minnesota researchers, the sodium pentobarbital used to euthanise pets "survives rendering without undergoing degradation". Fat stabilisers are introduced into the finished rendered product to prevent rancidity. Common chemical stabilisers include BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) and BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) - both known to cause liver and kidney dysfunction - and ethoxyquin, a suspected carcinogen."
"...The rendering plant floor is piled high with "raw product": thousands of dead dogs and cats; heads and hooves from cattle, sheep, pigs and horses; whole skunks; rats and raccoons - all waiting to be processed. In the 90-degree heat, the piles of dead animals seem to have a life of their own as millions of maggots swarm over the carcasses.
Two bandana-masked men begin operating Bobcat mini-dozers, loading the "raw" into a 10-foot- deep stainless-steel pit. They are undocumented workers from Mexico, doing a dirty job. A giant auger-grinder at the bottom of the pit begins to turn. Popping bones and squeezing flesh are sounds from a nightmare you will never forget.
Rendering is the process of cooking raw animal material to remove the moisture and fat. The rendering plant works like a giant kitchen. The cooker, or "chef", blends the raw product in order to maintain a certain ratio between the carcasses of pets, livestock, poultry waste and supermarket rejects.
Once the mass is cut into small pieces, it is transported to another auger for fine shredding. It is then cooked at 280 degrees for one hour. The continuous batch cooking process goes on non-stop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week as meat is melted away from bones in the hot 'soup'. During this cooking process, the 'soup' produces a fat of yellow grease or tallow that rises to the top and is skimmed off. The cooked meat and bone are sent to a hammermill press, which squeezes out the remaining moisture and pulverises the product into a gritty powder. Shaker screens sift out excess hair and large bone chips. Once the batch is finished, all that is left is yellow grease, meat and bone meal."
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/petfood1.html
***
According to the list of ingredients, the 14th is Ethoxyquin which protects fats from rancidity. It seems to be pretty toxic, especially to the liver, and a quick web search gave me these opinions:
"... I further learned from the Chemical Toxicology of Commercial Products (Ref. Gosselin et al., 1984) that "E" has a toxic rating of 3 (on a scale of 1~, with 6 being super toxic requiring less than 7 drops to produce death), slowly developing depression, con-vulsions, coma and death; skin irritation and liver damage."
AND
"...Ethoxyquin is not used as a preservative for HUMAN foods with the following exception: . It is permitted to "promote colour retention" in paprika and ground chili pepper in a maximum concentration of 100 ppm.
...The maximum allowable residue in eggs, meat, poultry, apples, pears, poultry fat and livers for HUMAN use is 0.5 ppm.
...In ANIMAL feeds, the maximum allowable concentration of ethoxyquin is 150 ppm.
...Chronic feeding studies in rats of 0.2 % of ethoxyquin in the diet caused transient depression in growth rate, At necropsy, damage to kidneys, liver and thyroid gland were seen in many of the male rats but not in the females.
...diets containing 0.5 % ethoxyquin fed to rats for up to 18 months, produced renal lesions in all of the study animals.
***************
Bon Appétit !!
I must second the comments of "anonymous" above. I just stumbled across your ambitious experiment... and would love if you would extend yourself for at least a full month.
Your viewership is just beginning to grow. Don't disappoint us now!
You might also consider putting the pellets and some water in a blender and simply "chugging" your meals. Hell, anybody can force down a glass of monkey-juice a few times a day for a month.
thanks again, and good luck!
Y'know, thouugh, the fruit thing would still be OK. Fruit can be cheap. And it still needs no dishes or silverware in most cases.
I think if you added fruit you could do 30 days.
YES!!!! 30-DAYS!
In the quest to drive you to 30-days, I'm sure your viewers would allow you to add some occasional fruit. Perhaps you could take the advise of a previous commenter and have some homemade fruitscicles hidden around your apartment.
I also find it amusing that the fact-sheet specifically says Monkey Diet "DRY". Is there a Monkey Diet "WET"?
good luck!
Has your experiment given you a greater sympathy to the plight of house pets? Is it possible that dogs and cats everywhere wish to eat their owners' faces and steal their pizza? When can we expect a full-scale pet revolt?
If you decide to push the experiment to 30 days, try to get financial backing first. That should defray some of the potential medical costs involved; not necessarily from the monkey chow itself, but from the potential diseases caused by groupies and other scantily clad women who sleep with the semi-famous. Good luck!
I would definitely add in some fruits to your diet. Typically zoos add fruits and stuff to vary the diet a bit.
After the comment above about the contents of the "animal protein" in your monkey-chow, I'm pretty nervous about what you are putting in to your body. I hope you are too.
But if you do start to soak the monkey chow in liquids, can we get a shot of you eating it.
Good luck sicko.
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I think I am going to go feed my dog a steak with carrots!!!!
I am he who has provided thee with bread (toast) for thy table and wine for thyne cup...but monkey chow seems pretty fuckin' ok too. Good luck, maybe I'll see you up hre in a few months, we can hang out and I'll buy you a sandwhich.
Are you working or going to school while trying this? I'm wondering how much of a normal life that you're actually sustaining during the experiment or if your focusing on just surviving.
don't get me wrong, this is interesting, funny, etc. but only a week? it seems like at least three weeks to a month would be necessary as a minimum for any meaningful results. think about it...you can survive a week without eating anything at all. how can you expect any adverse effects from nutritionally complete food, even if it is engineered in pellet form? pussy.
I would like to agree with the others about the fruit. Even if its minimal. Zoos let monkeys (and other animals) eat fruit like bananas, oranges, apples. If you're concerned about the budget, scope out the neighborhood for fruit trees. Even leaves, but make sure they're not oleander or something harmful.
im quite sure that you will lose some weight. Animals ALWAYS need a combination of fresh food and crude food. But mostly these crude foods are there to give stuff that is missing in the fresh food.
But on the other hand, the food appears to have everything you need to survive though (fat/prots/carbs/minerals/vitamins). But your first 3 weeks will be a bitch, because it usually takes 3 weeks for your intestinal system to adapt to new nutritional conditions.
FYI, here's the original text from Zupreem. They may be able to instantly change their website, but they can't change Google's cache, or all the sites of the online stores that sell their stuff. Note there's no mention of humans. But then, I'm not sure where you fit on the zoology chart anyway.
---------------
ZuPreem® Primate Dry Diet
A complete & balanced diet for the nutrition of primates including the great apes. Contains vitamin D3 at levels suitable for Old & New World monkeys. (Marmosets & tamarins should use ZuPreem® Marmoset Diet.) This diet has been used extensively by bird & reptile owners as a dietary supplement in addition to a diet heavy in fresh produce
--------------
BA
I'm glad to see you doing this. I've thought about it on and off for many years. (My uncle was a sales rep for Purina when I was a kid.) Personally, I tend to eat two or three basic meals (turkey sandwich, vegetable soup, Grape-nuts cereal, for example) almost exclusively for about a year and a half before I get tired of them and switch to another set. If I could use monkey chow as one of my set, it would greatly simplify life. Even if it's just m.c. for breakfast, that would be significant.
If you find the ZuPreem getting old, you might want to try some of the other varieties. There's the Purina, and with a little poking around the web, I've found bannana and other various fruit flavored m.c. as well.
I wouldn't get all uptight about the various sources of protein in pet food. Do you think zoos risk the health of their multi-million dollar primates? Or research labs, where the base-line health of the primate subjects is key to proper data collection? We've gotten awfully squeamish in the western world in the last couple of centuries, but as a species, we can do quite well with a significantly more "robust" diet.
Good luck.
I'm sure the monkey chow is safe to eat. You're doing important work here, but you would benefit mankind so much more if you continued this experiment for at least a month.
How many calories are in one pellet?
The cat food I feed my cats doesn't have some of the ingredients the monkey chow does.
The BHA, propyl gallate and ethoxyquin are especially bothersome to me.
From www.purelypets.com :
BHT/BHA and Ethoxyquin
These popular preservatives are heavily used in the pet food industry, not only to preserve fats but to stabilize the whole product as well. We have certainly been educated as to the dangerous side-effects of BHT/BHA in our own diets as a serious carcinogen, but little truth has been shared about Ethoxyquin. This preservative was developed in the 1950's as a rubber stabilizer and herbicide, very similar to Agent Orange! It was either never approved by the FDA or recalled after three years of human use (I researched both accounts) but one thing is for certain, the documented cases of serious side-effects resulting from exposure to, or ingestion of this chemical. Humans who were working with it in the rubber industry, reported a dramatic rise in such diseases as liver/kidney damage, cancerous skin lesions, loss of hair, blindness, leukemia, fetal abnormalities and chronic diarrhea. In animals it has been linked to immune deficiency syndrome, spleen, stomach and liver cancer, as well as the above mentioned diseases. The steady increase in animal cancer and serious diseases has paralleled the increased use of chemical preservatives in the pet food industry during the last twenty-five years!
-----------------------------
Propyl gallate retards the spoilage of fats and oils and is often used with BHA and BHT, because of the synergistic effects these preservatives have. The best studies on rats and mice were peppered with suggestions (but not proof) that this preservative might cause cancer. Avoid.
(http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm )
Oh well, I do appreciate what you've done for humour's sake! You might even bring attention to someone improving food for primates. You could be their spokesman!
Well if you ever do anything like this agin i would suggest that you follow the feeding instructions (suggested serving's). Anyhow good luck.
doing normal things like reading (and looking up) ingredients lists before you buy something would have seemed a bit more logical ... as you are putting a serious risk on your health feeding yourself something that monkeys basically have no choice about eating...
If they're in captivity, it's eat that or starve. most will eat that instead of suffer chronic diarrhea from only fruit and veg. Both of which you should be eating, too.
If cats and dogs don't have a ready source of bird & rodent snacks, most will eat whatever their captors give them. Some will get mean and angry about it - ever wondered why your cat pissed in your bed? your dog ate your stairs? Wonder why the monkeys in the primate house look really really depressed?
Also the comments about rendered animals are to be headed - this is no joke, and is a disgusting "money saving "practice that endangers the health of a lot of animals as well as the people who work in those environments. Also, I know from first-hand info that the SPCA ships off their euthanized carcasses of former pets to rendering plants. The Montreal SPCA alone euthanizes thousands of animals per year, and Purina adds them to their "pet foods".
Think before you eat!
Three points:
1. If euthanized animals are being sold to rendering plants, why are we paying $60 or $80 each to have them cremated? Are some vets honest cremators and others grave-robbers?
2. I believe that non-human primates can make their own Vitamin C; humans can't. Therefore, your diet is likely defficient in that vitamin.
3. I'd worry about BSE (mad cow disease).
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