She’ll never be able to enjoy Earl Grey properly that way.
Oh uuhhhhh christ I put half the characters in green shirts and the kitchen is a green background RIP my life.
She’ll never be able to enjoy Earl Grey properly that way.
Any biologists out there? How scientifically sound is it that an obligate carnivore would have an aversion to sugar?
Any carnivore that eats all of its prey (e.g. swallows it whole) is going to have to digest whatever that prey was eating. So it’s going to be getting at least a little bit of plant matter. For example, a coyote eating mice is eating the plants in the mice stomachs.
Sugar…? I suspect that a full carnivore wouldn’t have an evolutionary reason to develop or retain “sweet” taste buds. So it might not even be able to detect sugar.
We actually all have or know someone that owns an obligate carnivore; the cat. Catfood actually has no sugar in it because cats can’t taste sugar while dog food is slightly sweet because dogs, not an obligate carnivore, have a sweet tooth.
So many obligate carnivores can’t even taste sweet, so it might indeed shift the flavors around in a bad way.
Every animal advanced enough to have a circulatory system has sugar in it’s bloodstream. That’s how the energy derived from food goes out to the muscles, nerves, and everything else. So a carnivore may not have a taste for sugar, but it’s certainly going to be able to ingest, digest, and utilize reasonable amounts of it.
Careful, just because something is used internally by the body does not mean ingesting it is necessarily a good idea. While sugar is not strictly toxic for cats, its not particularly good for them either, feline diabetes is a thing for example. Cats have evolved to get their calories from meat, thats the best way to feed them.
And to continue this thought, remember people, you can raise your blood sugar by eating regular foods. So that’s how a cat keeps its blood sugar levels at a healthy level.
The most efficient way for us is to eat sugar directly, but without that as an option we have other ways like any other animal which might not have the option.
Not a biologist, but most (all?) sugar in the U.S. is derived from sugar beets. Selkie’s low tolerance for plant matter may have something to do with her intolerance to sugar.
But that’s just a guess.
I’m talking about just granulated sugar, not things like honey, corn syrup, or molasses. She might be able to eat honey, now that I think about it. I hope she can, so she can laugh about eating bee vomit. 🙂
There’s virtually no organic “plant matter” left in refined white sugar. Whether it comes from sugar beets or sugar cane, it’s still pretty much pure sucrose.
It may be that sucrose is something Selkie can’t tolerate, OR her species may have evolved to dislike the taste of sucrose because it is found in fruits and vegetables, which are not food for her. In any case, fruity things definitely taste “Yuck!” to her, so I don’t think she’d want to eat honey, which is about 55% fructose — actual fruit sugar.
Otoh, it could simply be a personal preference on top of everything else, the way Amanda likes sour things that even other humans recoil at. Cool common ground, if that’s the case. 🙂
that is very low sugar count so it may be more the bitter acids of the lemon. (depending on the type of lemon for instance Myer lemons are sweet and delicious)
Doctor Pohl said that the sugary savor was not something they like.
https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie789/
That is a brilliant move. She needs sour flavors in her life, give her sour flavors so she won’t be walking about drunk as hell. Trust the man with Antonio Banderas’ voice to come up with such a thing for her.
And for those curious about what it tastes like, the water does dilute the sour, but not by much. It is exactly what he calls it, a punch in the tooth. Which is why I’ve been making it at home myself for a long while now.
That’s ok Mr. Dave. Sometimes people with green kitchens wear green clothes.
Took me a moment to realize Todd was referring to multiple types of tea, not just using Selkie’s pluralses.
When I worked for a school board, my boss was diabetic, so one of the other workers would usually bring in sugar-free pies for celebrations. (We had a party every month for birthdays, since we had many dozens of people.)
She seemed to be particularly proud of her key lime pie. As far as I’m aware, the only people who ate it were her, the boss, and me. I don’t think anyone ever told her that non-sugar sweeteners are available. (This was right when Splenda hit the market, if memory serves.) It was… tart. Delicious, but tart.
When I worked for a school board, my boss was diabetic, so one of the other workers would usually bring in sugar-free pies for celebrations. (We had a party every month for birthdays, since we had many dozens of people.)
She seemed to be particularly proud of her key lime pie. As far as I’m aware, the only people who ate it were her, the boss, and me. I don’t think anyone ever told her that non-sugar sweeteners are available. (This was right when Splenda hit the market, if memory serves.) It was… tart. Delicious, but tart.
(PS: Dave, I think either your site or my browser is screwing up, because it keeps rejecting my posts as spam.)
That pie sounds amazing personally. I would join you guys happily.
My mom raised me and my sister as kool aid kids. But she didn’t like how sweet it was so she didn’t use as much sugar, sometimes half to three quarters what the recipe called for. They use far too much sugar and to this day I find it way too sweet and I have to use much less than they suggest.
Prolly come out better if you cooked the sugar into a light syrup first. same amount, but sweeter because it’s been separated into its constituents, fructose and cornsyrup
If I used sugar it would be a whipped cream topping so you get a nice layer effect and can get this contrast going.
Woo, no sugar, her teeth will be juuust fine
oh wait, no. lemon is much worse. get that girl a tums to chew.
It’s kinda cute how she likes it. :3
X3 Pff. Selkie’s face though.
…. Well, at least Selkie and Amanda won’t fight over a favorite drink. :p
I’ve never been able to make homemade lemonade with sugar that tasted even slightly all right, so I developed a taste for completely unsweetened lemonade instead. (Artificial sweetener gives me horrible migraines.)
Hmm… if one thinks about it, a modest amount of lemon juice mixed with water is not that different from a tea, in terms of how much plant matter is in it. Selkie might be able to tolerate it, if not now, then probably at some later date after building up her tolerances by drinking tea regularly.