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Rats prefer organic food

Tuesday September 16th, 2008. 1:27 pm by frog

Yum, organic baking! According to Mother Earth News, via Ecoscraps:

40 lab rats were offered a choice between organic and conventional biscuits by Swiss and Austrian scientists.  The rats preferred the organic biscuits, which makes you wonder if rats are smarter than humans.

Those are some pretty lucky lab rats getting the biscuit tasting job rather than the one involving electrodes or pharmaceuticals. And the Swiss and Austrians have some fairly good bakeries too.

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Posted in Environment & Resource Management | by frog | Tue, September 16th, 2008 |

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4 Responses to “Rats prefer organic food”

1. StephenR Says:
   September 16th, 2008 at 1:58 pm

   Vaguely interesting, but I wonder what the point and conclusion of the experiment was…

2. eredwen Says:
   September 16th, 2008 at 3:33 pm

   StephenR,

   I find that very interesting!

   Here is a starter about “the the point and conclusion of the experiment”:

   With humans’ inferior sense of smell (and therefore sense of taste?) we are unable to detect what mice can.

   The fact that they consistently make the choice to go with the organic, leads to the question “Why?”

   What is it about our “substitute” ingredients and additives (that we accept because we don’t detect) that they reject?

   Does this matter?

   … etc

3. StephenR Says:
   September 16th, 2008 at 3:46 pm

   Ah, I see.

   I would think that the next step would be unprocessed food. Is this something to act upon?

4. weedeater Says:
   September 18th, 2008 at 8:54 pm

   its like the way birds will always go for the hempseed…oh but of course you cant feed them something you cant buy….

   however a friend did bring a sack of hempseed shell pellets from Walnut Street seed company in Ashburton-

   extruded after pressing of the valuable seed oil and intended as animal feed or supplement (rich in omega 3 6 and 9 like the seed oil itself?).

   my dog likes the pellets. She is getting old and had developed a leakage problem but as soon as i started supplementing th hemp, she came right

   as a weed eater i too like th good seed - the shell pellets are an acquired taste but not bad adn they sit in ones stomach quite nicely…

   have no idea whether theyre organic but hemp does require minimal pesticides etc. i heard one trial crop was a disaster because it was being grown for the seed and the birds ravaged it!

   the pellets can be purchased from walnut st (h)Ashburton, $35 for 20 kg bag. I hope to buy a sack next week while passing thru there

   rgds

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