I think you're underestimating the emotional complexity of cats. They can develop quite a lot of neurotic behaviors, just like humans can.

It's not carb addiction. While we are omnivores and are naturally drawn to carbs (think fruit), cats are pure carnivores.

Cats often have a reputation as fussy eaters. This is because they have a scent organ in the roof of their mouths called the vomeronasal, or Jacobson's organ. When this organ becomes sensitised to a specific food, a cat will reject any food that doesn't fit the pattern it is expecting.
http://felinegreat.com/characteristics.html

As far as I know, she didn't force them to finish, but kept fussing with every brand of food she couls find to please their "finicky" palates. I have no clue how much was grainy cat food (most likely) or meat.

I've never known of a human baby not fed carbs from birth, since human breast milk is quite carby itself and sweet-tasting. If we're supposed to subsist on meat and vegetable matter, I doubt the food designed to sustain an infant to the age of eating solid foods would be full of lactose. That's just my own theory, I have no proof of it.

Pets can be quite neurotic, and even get cravings based on physical needs that make NO sense. When one of our cats needs a worming, she tries to eat plastic. Another used to lick photographs. My daughter's cat, the plastic-eater has an insatiable appetite for earwax. Knowing the boy is a rich source of grubby gunk, she'll practically maul him if she sees him stick a finger in his ear. <bleh> I don't know if we seek out freakish pets, or if we make them that way. Heredity vs environment again!

I had a cat that would lick the q-tips I threw in the trash... was it the ear wax he was after? ew! I know he also ate some of my ear plugs because I saw he had passed them in his kitty litter.

He also loved to lick my ears, but he did that to his buddy cat too. Definitely some sort of ear fetish going on. Then I have a siamese that LOVES to lick plastic shopping bags. I have no idea why. I'd call these idiosyncracies rather than neurosies.

The net effect may be the same, but the amount of rational thought that goes into each one is different. Animals act on instinct and respond to stimuli; they get hungry, they go looking for something to eat and eat the first thing available that is edible to them; they don't think about what to eat or how much of it to eat. Let's look at the definition of Instinct:

"A largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason."

Now, contrast that with the definition of Intuition:

"Immediate apprehension or cognition, the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference, quick and ready insight". The operational word here is evident; that's not to say it doesn't happen, it's just not obvious.

It's not about not thinking at all and eating the first thing that we find that is edible as an animal would do; I can't see a wolf passing up an easy elk calf kill because it 'feels' more like moose that day. Going back to the original article, the definition of intuitive eating is this:



Instead of worrying about how many calories, fat grams, protein grams, carb grams, sugar grams or combination of all of them, the author chooses to try to figure out what his body wants and provide it and then only enough of it to satiate, not stuff. This works only when the 'signals' are not messed up and interfered with by disease. It also involves a lot more thought and thinking about food than one might think (hmmm...I'm hungry, but what am I hungry for?). Instead of thinking about defined, measurable things, the intuitive eater now needs to 'get in touch' with their body's signals which are a lot harder to measure and define.
Personally, I think I find it a lot easier to only count carbs and let the rest of my macros work themselves out, eat when hungry, stop when I'm not hungry any more. It's also a lot easier to plan meals and do my shopping when I'm not having to think about what my body wants at every meal.
To tell you the truth, if I was this guy's wife I have a feeling I'd find myself saying all too often, "I made chicken for dinner. If you feel like salmon instead, feel free to go buy it and cook it your own *&$% self!"

The wife says:



This is where the definition of intuition comes in--



Ths husband says, evidently without conscious thought, "I'd love chicken, honey."

Wooo


This story is no experiment, but... I used to live in a town in central PA that had a high meadow up in the mountains about 1000 feet above the town. Every July people went up there in groups to pick wild blueberries. The meadow was covered with high bush blueberries, and there were so many berries that the meadow itself looked blue.

The reason people went there in groups was evident in the name of the place, Bear Meadow. These were black bears, not grizzlies, but often sows had cubs with them, and were plenty dangerous.

I doubt photoperiod had much to do with them being there, it was usually July when the berries were ripe.

There isn't much fat in blueberries, but they sure are sweet. The bears risked interactions with humans to eat there in broad daylight.

I think the bears were just reacting to opportunities in their environment. They abandon some of their reticence because they are drawn to berries, just like our ancestors probably were. Hunter-gatherers are good at taking advantage of gathering opportunities and know where to be and when to be there.

I don't think eating food when it is available is necessarily intuitive, it's just smart.

But if addictive and potentially dangerous "food" is available in unlimited supply all year round, we have to invent ways to stay thin, and having good intuition may be one of them.


I agree, it's both. I think we're hard-wired to seek and consume carbs, and in a pre-agricultural environment they aren't available in quantity long enough to make us sick.

My home in Colorado is surrounded by pine trees and squirrels. Great now I have someone to feed the bread to from the fastfood cheeseburgers and I put out nuts every few days. When they find the nuts the squirrels sit down and eat them until there gone but the bread might sit there several days. Maybe they are somewhat intuitive eaters. I haven't seen any fat squirrels.

It's not just animals "in nature." Growing up on a ranch, I can say that different animals gain or lose weight in rates that vary about as much as you and I. All our horses had the same diet--grass in the summer, hay in the winter-of course they chose the quantity as it is difficult to tell a horse out in the pasture when to quit munching. We had one mare that was consistently very fat. The kids all loved her gentle and slow nature. I don't know what "childhood issues" she may have had nor if she had personal concerns about her figure. The other horses also ranged considerably in weight, but none as much as her.

Feeding cattle with the express intention of fattening them up (more fat = more cash), also has wide variations in success on exactly the same food and constant access.

We've had dogs that you could let them have constant access to food and they would self-regulate. We've also had dogs that would blow up like balloons if you didn't limit their access.

We are animals.

Well, there it is then. Thanks for the info. As I've never seen a fat horse (just typing that makes me want to laugh!) I would never have known. I guess they use the model horses on TV!

There are genetic and hormonal differences in animals too. I know cats tend to get hyperthyroid and dogs tend to get hypothyroid diseases. Maybe horses as well. Plus whatever else underlies the differences in metabolism from one individual to another probably also takes place in animals.

I have a fat cat and two skinny cats from the same litter. Both parents are thin...

All the little children would learn to ride on her. My dad made us all learn to ride bareback first. She was wide enough that little 2 and 3 year-old kid legs would practically stick straight out when they were on her back. She would trot along, they would fall off, then she would stop and stand there until someone came to rescue them and plunk them back on her. She would do about anything for a kid, but put an adult on her and she would hardly move. Not much of a cow pony, but the greatest kid horse you could find.

I believe there are about as many variations in animals in both physiology and psychology as there are in humans. We even had a completely gay horse-she would have added quite a discussion to the heredity vs. environment arguments!

Anyway, as far as intuitive eating, I intuitively know that method of eating would keep me as fat as the gentle old mare I grew up with!