Similar foods
by ferretpapa
I'm working on mapping which foods are most similar to each other. You can see this by clicking on any food and scrolling to the bottom of the page. The intended purpose for this is if you're feeding something that has gone out of stock and need to find a replacement. As we all know, ferrets are extremely picky, and getting them to try something new is difficult!
It will only show foods that are the same type (kibble, canned, etc.) and have the same primary protein source (chicken, duck, lamb, etc.).
From there it looks at all of the foods that match those 2 criteria and compares the meat, protein, and fat percentages, and the protein-to-fat ratio. So really, it's just comparing similar analysis but not ingredients.
For raw and canned foods, this is probably enough. These are usually 90+% meat-based anyways, so as long as they share the same primary animal protein, they should taste similar. For kibbles though, those filler ingredients like corn, potatoes, and so on have a huge effect on the flavor of the food.
So this is still a work in progress, the next version will also look at all the individual ingredients and see which ones they have in common.
Just remember though, ferrets will always be picky. Even if two foods are almost identical, they may turn their nose up at them. An example I've witnessed among my own ferrets is feeding the Ziwipeak chicken cat food vs. Ziwipeak chicken dog food. You couldn't possibly find two foods that are more similar. Literally the only differences are in the size of the pieces and the vitamin and mineral additives. But they'll refuse to eat one or the other.
So if your go-to kibble is out of stock and you're being forced to try something new, you might as well go for a healthier option.
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