Two weeks ago, my cat Annie stopped eating. After taking down three hearty meals a day, she woke up one morning, looked into her bowl of multi-colored cronchies, and… walked away with a disappointed look on her face.
Many cats are picky eaters. But Annie takes the cake. She will only eat *one* thing: the Friskies Surfin Turfin Favorites dry food blend (this is NOT a sponsored post). She doesn’t want wet food, she doesn’t want people food. She will tolerate an occasional catnip-covered freeze dried chicken treat, but we’re pretty sure it’s just for the catnip (#StonerCat).
So when she stopped eating her Friskies, she stopped eating altogether. And the thing about cats is… they *have* to eat. After about two days without food, their livers go haywire, and they can actually die. In other words, Annie’s sudden hunger strike was a medical emergency.
And she acted like she was hungry! After about a day or so, she had eaten all the crumbs off the kitchen floor. She even fished some out from under the stove. But her brimming full bowl of Friskies? No interest.
Now… I don’t like feeding Annie Friskies. It’s not exactly the greatest in terms of ingredients. When Annie first arrived in my home with a bag of it in tow, I made a plan. She would be allowed to finish this bag, but I would start mixing in better, healthier food into her dish, gradually decreasing the amount of Friskies until she transitioned to 100% healthy food.
At first, it worked. Annie started eating the fancy-organic-responsibly farmed food. But as time passed, she ate less and less of it. And she was getting smaller and smaller. I called our vet, we ran some tests: Annie was perfectly fine. She was playful and snuggly. So why wasn’t she eating?!
When Annie got down to 8.5 pounds (from 12!) in just a matter of months, I got desperate, and dug out the old bag of Friskies. Annie immediately ate a whole bowl; full and happy, she waddled to lounge in the sun. Reluctantly we let her eat Friskies and she gained back the weight. Her fur got shinier, her meows more confident. I gritted my teeth, but relented. Fine, Friskies it is.
The thing I hate about Friskies, other than ingredients, is that you can only buy them in stores I don’t really go to. Being the yuppie snob that I am, I do most of my shopping at independently owned local stores: Berkeley Bowl, Gus’s, Good Eggs, and in an emergency, the Trader Joe’s down the street. None of these grocerers carry Friskies.
To get them, I have to schlep to Safeway or Target. I hope and pray I don’t run into someone I know, who will see me buying a $3 bag of cat food for Annie, while I’m getting organic blueberries and free range eggs for us. I worry they’ll judge my choices and assume that I’m willing to compromise on my cat’s health in favor of cost.
So a few weeks ago, I decided to skip the Safeway line, and buy Annie’s Friskies online. The package was shipped from a warehouse somewhere near Chicago. Now, you may wonder why that detail is relevant… Remember Annie’s hunger strike? It just so happened to coincide with us opening this new, Chicago-adjacent bag of Friskies.
My partner was the first to realize something was wrong. “Hey, do these look slightly different to you?,” he asked holding up a handful of cronchies. Now, I have to admit, I hadn’t really analyzed the Surfin Turfin Favorites before. I knew they were mostly brown, some pieces were shaped like fish, others like chicken drumsticks and ribs. But no idea was off the table to get Annie to eat.
We felt insane, but we went back to our local Safeway and bought another bag. It *was* different. There were slightly different markings on the back, but most importantly, the pieces themselves were different. California Friskies, as we came to call them, were slightly less colorful than their Chicagoland cousins. Some of the pieces were slightly different shapes. And when we offered the California Friskies to Annie, after a 3-day fast, she ate them with great gusto.
We got so mad. At Friskies, for manufacturing their product slightly differently at different facilities (“don’t they know cats are ridiculously picky?!?! Why tempt fate?!”). At Annie, for being the weirdest and pickiest cat in the world. At the universe, for giving us a cat who will literally starve herself to death if a multinational corporation changes how a single product is manufactured.
And then we realized that we had a very similar human food experience a few months back.
Now… the same way that Annie loves Friskies, I love Cocoa Puffs. I don’t believe in guilty pleasures, but they’re definitely my comfort snack. It was the cereal I always wanted as a child, but rarely got (and not for the reason you may think). My parents didn’t care about the sugar: we were just too poor to buy brand name cereal on a regular basis.
As a financially independent adult, I always keep a box of Cocoa Puffs in my home. I rarely have them for breakfast, but I do often eat them for dessert. Especially late at night.
And one day, my partner and I both bought replacement boxes from different stores. But when I poured some from a freshly opened box into a bowl, I noticed something was… off. They were smaller, and definitely less shiny. And after I tasted them, I knew I was right: they *were* different. And worse.
We opened the other box. Vindication! These (Better) Cocoa Puffs were a different size, a different shape, and they tasted like we expected them to.
We scoured the internet for an announcement about the change in formula. We found nothing except for some conspiracy posts on reddit from Cocoa Puff enthusiasts like us. But then, a few months after we nearly broke out the calipers to measure each Puff, General Mills made an announcement that it was bringing back its old formula. Vindication once again: sounds like we weren’t the only ones who thought these new Cocoa Puffs sucked.
Here we were displeased with a reformulation of our favorite cronchies, just like Annie.
Processed food gets a bad rap: it’s bad for your health, bad for the environment, bad for the people who grow its ingredients. Many of us avoid eating it. But then, a craving hits, and we drop a colorful box in our shopping cart. And we expect it to taste just like we remember. But what both Annie and I learned is that we can’t always count on that.
Now, I scrutinize bags of Friskies and boxes of Cocoa Puffs on a supermarket shelf. Do the Friskies have the same factory stamps as the ones Annie likes? Do these Cocoa Puffs have the right ingredients? It seems bonkers, but really, it mimics how I buy other food: I don’t just add a whole bunch of apples to my bag, I examine each one to pick the best ones. And now I guess I’ll do the same, forever searching for California Friskies and Better Cocoa Puffs.
