Just before the New Year, I was talking with a hunter I know. He mentioned how much he enjoys preparing venison for non-hunters. So often, they’re surprised by how good it tastes. Only one thing bothers him. After they declare it to be delicious, they’ll say, “I expected it to be gamey.”
“I’m so tired of people saying they expect it to be ‘gamey,’” he told me. “Venison is about the nicest meat I can imagine.”
A few nights later, a couple of friends were here at our place for dinner. Among the dishes on the table was a bowl of venison meatballs. I told one of our guests how fond Cath is of that particular recipe. “Oh,” he asked, “does it help get the gamey flavor out?”
The gamey flavor. What is with that?
Is this notion stuck in people’s heads because they’re freaked out by the idea of eating wild animals? Is it rooted in cultural and economic history, in the feeling that game-consumption is a sign of poverty?
Are people speaking from experience? Have they been subjected to horrendous cooking? Have they been traumatized by eating venison that was poorly processed, or was “aged” until it turned green? (For a not-so-scientific investigation into the effects of such handling, see “The Taste Controversy Ends” from the U.S. Venison Council.)
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe, in my decade as a vegan, I simply forgot what domestic meat tastes like.
Cath and I do eat plenty of local chicken and turkey, but when it comes to red meat, venison is the only flavor I really know. When the weather warms, I’ll be slicing thin strips of backstrap, sautéing them lightly, and serving them over fresh salad greens from the garden. Cooking venison this way doesn’t get rid of any of the flavor, thankfully.
Maybe there’s nothing wrong with beef, but I expect it might taste farmy.
© 2011 Tovar Cerulli
Well, I think there is such a thing as a gamey flavor. And I love it! If I was served venison and it wasn’t gamey, I’d be disappointed. I would describe “gamey” as an intense, complex, and ever so slightly funky flavor. Most domesticated meat tastes insipid to me. In my experience, a really well cured and aged piece of pork can sometimes approach the complexity and funk of game meats, but it’s still not quite the same thing. It’s rare anyway to find such cured meats these days. Hardly anyone will take the time. I think most people are just accustomed to bland meat and prefer what they’re familiar with.
At culinary school one chef swore up and down that the superior flavors in wild meat – pretty much any wild meat – boiled down to insects. Insects contain in their bodies staggering numbers of chemical compounds. Wild animals consume insects, even if they’re herbivores, since plants are home to insects and/or their eggs. According to the chef, those compounds persist in the flesh of the consuming animal, and lend complexity and flavor to the meat. I think this is a very credible claim. In my experience of feeding Japanese beetles, worms, and grasshoppers to my laying hens, this theory holds water. The eggs are definitely better in summer when there are plenty of insects for them to eat. Anyone who’s ever compared the taste of a wild trout to a farmed one will have first hand evidence for this theory as well. This is probably also why meats from pastured animals actually taste like something.
It might interest you to know also that in culinary school gamey meats were considered so valuable that they were often cut with pork in sausages, terrines, fillings, etc. Fresh pork is almost entirely devoid of flavor, so you can cut anything with it. (Which is odd considering how much flavor develops in cured pork.) A “venison terrine” might be a 50-50 mix of venison and pork. It’s a good trick to know. Gaminess isn’t for everyone at full strength. But you might bring someone round with initially low doses of game.
Interesting, Kate!
I definitely don’t expect grouse to taste like domestic poultry, and I like grouse a lot.
This winter I had the chance to cook a domestic rabbit and a snowshoe hare a week or two apart. To my palate, the hare tasted far better. It wasn’t just the idea of the hare being wild, and it wasn’t just the different ways I prepared them. There was something different in the flesh itself.
Maybe I’ve gone feral.
Your comments also remind me of my brother-in-law, who is in dairy science. Cheese producers were trying to replicate a particular flavor from a particular regional cheese and couldn’t. Finally, the researchers figured out that the vegetation on which the cows were grazing in that particular region were being attacked by certain insects. In response to those attacks, the plants were creating particular chemical compounds which the cows were ingesting. Those compounds were part of what gave the cheese its distinctive flavor!
Tovar – interesting corollary about the plants’ response to insect pressure. That’s totally believable as the other half of the picture. I’d bet that good flavor in meat or animal products is often a product of both the insects and the plants’ chemical response to them. Don’t know much about the diet of river fish or whether aquatic insects would put pressure on any plants the fish might eat. Interesting topic.
When I was telling someone about discovering venison this winter and how much we liked it, they asked me “What does it taste like? Is it gamey?” I asked what they meant and they answered, “You know, like lamb.”
That comment spoke volumes to me: Americans don’t like food that has a taste other than sweet. Umami, or even savory, is just not something they know how to approach much less appreciate. It’s like they’re missing a taste receptor. So sad.
I think “gamey” is one of three things:
1) Improperly handled meat, which is to say, “tainted.”
2) Poorly cooked wild game, which is to say “overcooked – tastes like liver.”
3) Meat with all the flavor that comes with a natural diet, which is to say, “not corn-fed like every other freakin’ meat in America.”
I had a revelation about this before I started hunting, when I made lunch – chicken tacos, made with Costco chicken breasts – for a Vietnamese exchange journalist at my newspaper in St. Paul. He said my tacos were good, but for the most part, he hated meat in America because it had no flavor. Where he came from, for example, pigs walked around and ate everything they could get their snouts on. I remembered that’s how we raised our pigs when I was a kid (though we didn’t let them wander – we took the food to them), and the meat was delicious.
That was the first thread pull that began to unravel the meat habits I’d developed as an adult – I’m forever grateful to him for reminding me of what I’d known as a child.
I’m with Kate — I like gamey. And I’ve had venison that has that funk, as well as venison that doesn’t. I’ve occasionally had a meat (a wild turkey, of all things) that was gamey to the point of being almost unpleasant, but that’s very rare.
I suspect that, given venison and a lean cut of beef, most tasters couldn’t reliably identify which was which.
I agree that handling and quickness/style of death makes a significant difference.
The two gamiest animals I have eaten were a Nyala bull that was gut shot by an outiftter’s client and took a while to find, the other was a Tsessebe that was not bled or gutted for a few hours after it was shot.
Kill them as fast as possible (which is an implict obligation we have anyway), bleed, gut and cool down and one shouldn’t have any problems.
Really old bulls/rams/bucks can be a little gamier but for me the jury is still out on that one – I have eaten old males of the species that were just fine.
I killed my first Black Bear last year and after hearing how gamy they can be I ate my first piece with trepidation. It was underwhelming. In fact the bear had very little taste and everyone I have fed it to has agreed that there is no way you could distinguish it from beef (its just tough). Sample of one, I know, but still makes me want to try meat from a different bear!
Waterfowl I have battled with ITO gaminess but thats more my penchant for overcooking it.
I love the taste of venison…
Oh yes – Costco chicken breasts barely resemble meat, the breasts have almost no muscle structure, they are like softened high density foam!
Having eaten just about everything possible and wanting to try more, I understand what people say when they say ‘gamey’, but honestly, i just think they are so used to the bland artificially-fed meats of society today. Gamey is natural when you let animals graze naturally, but we are so used to controlling feed that hardly anyone understands that ‘gamey’ used to be NORMAL when nothing was penned up and fed crap.
Domestic animals can be gamey too. I had some lamb a while ago that I couldn’t even eat..and that was with it drenched in a nice curry. My opinion is Venison tastes mostly like liver, but it ranges greatly (as does liver) from mild to strong. One can easily distinguish wild venison from finished beef. Distinguishing wild venison from grass fed beef would be harder, but still probably doable. I’ve had some wild elk that was really close to grass fed beef, but I’m certain I’d be able to pick out all the whitetail meat I’ve had from grass fed beef. The difference between grocery store pork and free range pork (even local farm pork on grains) is probably the most remarkable to me. Grocery store pork has become some sort of man-made concoction that hardly resembles pork. IMHO, people buying mass produced chicken aren’t buying the chicken for the sake of chicken flavor, they are buying a vehicle for their favorite sauce. The trend is most certainly toward milder tasting meat. It’s easier to have the dish come out right because as a cook, you don’t have to worry about the meat contributing a bad flavor.
I totally agree with you about the taste of pork from the grocery stores. Some years ago, my brothers raised a couple of hogs. One brother and I were sharing our home with a couple of other people and one of them refused to eat the pork the guys had raised, while we relished it. We explained to her that “This is how pork is supposed to taste – it hasn’t been fed commercial feed and growth hormones that make it grow to slaughter weight before the flavour develops,” but she wasn’t having any. She also wouldn’t eat the venison we had, either, or grass fed beef. She said they didn’t taste good. Ah, well, more for us. For our part, we enjoy game any time we can get it (caribou is especially delicious) and prefer the meat raised by the brothers to the insipid stuff in the stores. There’s more flavour, less fat, and therefore, less waste. True, we may have to invest a little more time in cooking certain cuts, but that’s what crock pots and Dutch ovens are for.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Carol. Amazing how narrow our tastes can become!
I’d have to agree with what others have written, that flavor or lack thereof is often related to what the animal has been eating. Most cattle are now fed corn in feedlots; same for hogs in CAFOs. I’ve read that many people try grass-fed beef but don’t stick with it. To them, it has an odd “gamey” flavor. These days, even beef doesn’t taste like beef.
On the other hand, I think Norcal is right about reasons #1 and #2 (poor handling and overcooking) being even more important. That’s where the “bad gamey” comes from. Plus, there’s that scientific study from the United States Venison Council.
Not everyone will agree with this, but I think we deer hunters have fallen for a lot of myths, superstition, and pseudoscience about aging our venison. Most are related to the marketing of “carefully aged beef.” Most beef, of course, isn’t aged. Here in the U.S., nearly all of it gets chilled fast and makes its way from the slaughterhouse to the grocery store in two to four days.
When it comes to aging, a massive beef carcass is different from a smaller, leaner deer carcass. Plus, when beef is aged, it’s done under very controlled conditions that are nothing like a week hanging from the oak tree in some deer hunter’s back yard. Freeze. Thaw. Freeze. Thaw. Sun. Wind. Rain. Sun. Sun. Etc.
So I suspect that when hunters age their deer, they almost always do more harm than good. When it comes to aging venison, there ought to be some kind of hippocratic hunter’s oath… “First, do no harm.” And any extra tenderness from four days of aging would be negated by just four seconds of overcooking.
Well-intentioned aging, along with some of the other traditional practices described in that academic white paper from the U.S. Venison Council, accounts for most of the “bad gamey” taste. But, as Kate and Tamar noted, there’s also “good gamey.”
Actually, this is making me hungry. Tonight we’re having leftover venison roast. It was the last one of the year. I did slightly overcook it last night. But even the leftovers will still be tasty…
I think overcooking is the culprit in many cases. Throwing a venison steak or a canada goose breast on the grill and cooking either one until well done is a surefire way to achieve “the liver effect”.
With waterfowl, an individual bird’s diet seems to makes a big difference in how it ranks as table fare. Wild rice fed teal, acorn fed wood ducks and corn fed mallards are a lot more appetizing to me than late season coastal black ducks that have been living on bivalves and other invertibrates. Even diving ducks seem to change flavor a bit based on where and what they’ve been eating. I’ve eaten goldeneyes that were taken along the St Lawrence river and they were decent table fare, but the same birds can be pretty tough to eat after they’ve spent a month or two dining on shellfish along the New England coast. And I’d say that seaducks always qualify as “gamey” to me.
Dave, do you skin your sea ducks? Hank and I got our first goldeneye and scoter ever this year. We skinned them and detected zero fishiness.
Here in the Kootenays we are blessed with a variety of game animals, each of which has it’s own unique qualities. This year I was lucky enough to get a large bodied white-tail (not too old, not too young), and a mature mule deer. Of the two, mule deer definitely has what might be described as a hint of “gaminess”.
I notice a difference between the front quarters and the hind quarters, the front generally being tougher, and more intense. We had a bunch of sausage made from the front quarters of the mule deer, which tastes just fine!
I once had a steak from a barren lands caribou, that a friend had brought down from northern Canada. That was the most amazing meat dish I have ever had. And yet i have heard people describe caribou as nearly inedible, if taken too far into the rut. I believe the colloquial term is “cari-poo”.
I tend to think, as Holly already highlighted in point #3 of her comment, that Michiganders tend to refer to meat as gamey, because they are not used to eating something which isn’t corn-fed.
The deer in the northern portion of the state do tend to taste differently, because they don’t have easy access to corn, beans, etc., while the deer in the southern part of the state taste more “normal” to people, because they are feeding on corn, beans, etc.
I do think, though, if we put together a survey, that most people from the state would refer to the northern deer meat as “gamey”, while the meat from the southern portion of the state would be more readily accepted.
Honestly, I can usually tell the difference – not always – but, if it’s prepared properly I love all venison!! I don’t care what part of the state, or what state, it comes from.
Another great topic, Tovar.
This, in my opinion, is really just a matter of people buying lousy food. As a culture, we are in for the quick and easy meal. We stopped eating meat from the grocery store. We raise all of our chickens and rabbits. We buy beef and pork from local farmers. There is a difference … ask anyone who has tried our chicken. It extends into the flora realm, too. Iceberg lettuce does not have any flavor … try a salad made with fresh picked leaf lettuces and compare.
We don’t buy meat from the big chain grocery stores either. Fortunately, there are a few smaller stores that sell local meats which makes them easier to track down and allows people to buy small quantities. I’ve considered getting a beef, a pig, etc, but that’s way more meat than we could ever eat. Once the garden comes in, meat consumption falls off a cliff. One point not mentioned (or maybe it was and I missed it) is the contribution of the freezer to the meat. It doesn’t matter what kind of food it is, but you can’t expect something kicking around in your freezer for 10 months to be decent quality.
One word: Foodsaver. Vacuum sealing your food makes a huge difference in how well it stores. It also may help that we use a chest freezer that sits at 0 and stays there because it’s not constantly opened like the fridge freezer. You can’t quite make fish last a year, but other meats? Definitely.
How do the economics of the Foodsaver system work out, Holly? I’ve thought about it, but the bags alone have seemed pricey.
So far I’ve used lightweight plastic bags (bread bags) for my venison, often double-bagging it. This seems much, much better than the old butcher-paper approach, but certainly isn’t as tight as a vacuum seal approach.
You have had better luck than I have. Cryovac helps, but generally I find quality decreases over time. I get better luck from fish by freezing the fish in water. I don’t freeze much fish though. I’ll freeze a bag or two of trout for a winter meal. Otherwise, I cook what I catch or give away the extra.
I wrap my venison in a layer of plastic wrap and squeeze out all the air as I wrap it, and then a layer of un-coated butcher paper. Easily keeps for better than a year if it happens to be that one piece that gets buried in the chest freezer. I buy both wraps in bulk from Sam’s Club. I like the idea of the Foodsaver, but like you, Tovar, am a little put off by the price. Keep in mind we are wrapping 6-9 deer a year lately.
Holly,
Yes, I do skin the divers. I’m specifically talking about goldeneyes and broadbills(scaup). The bills are usually pretty good, while the goldeneyes can have a stronger taste. Maybe the taste is not exactly “fishy”, but it seems to be more potent and less appealing.
I don’t really shoot scoter, oldsquaw or eiders these days. In the last few years, I’ve only had them when they were ground up into sausage. Guess I’ve just become squeamish about trying to eat them prepared in other ways.
Thanks for all the great comments, folks!
To me, our local venison tastes very mild. Maybe, like many of you, I’ve come back around to what Darien points out used to be normal.
Holly, I like your typology of gaminess, ranging from “not corn-fed like every other freakin’ meat in America” through “overcooked” and on to “tainted.” It points out a problem in terminology. It’s awfully confusing to use the same word (gamey) to describe (1) a mild, gently cooked piece of venison backstrap, (2) an overcooked hunk of old caribou, and (3) meat from the Nyala bull described by Brian.
Any suggestions for better terms? Al’s got us off to a start with “good gamey” and “bad gamey.”
Interesting about the whitetail versus the muley, Doug. I’ve heard similar comparisons before. I’ve had Quebec caribou a couple times and found it delicious.
DEM: True. I don’t think iceberg lettuce should qualify as a vegetable.
From what you’ve all said, it sounds like we could propose a typology of palates, too, perhaps ranging from A (All-American = sweet is good and styrofoam chicken is just fine) to F (Funky Feral = strong is good and the wilder the better). If we want to awaken some of those taste receptors, Kim, and move someone from A to B, best not to start with sea ducks!
Ha! Gamey? Isn’t that another word for flavor?
Jokes aside, I also think there is a difference between the flavors of the meat and just bad handling. How fast an animal goes down, it’s age, the stress it was under, and how long it took to cool all play a factor.
I’ve only started hunting and fishing again a little less than 2 years ago but I’ve pretty much given up on domestic meat. We do eat from local (as in not fast food) restaurants occasionally, we now buy almost nothing domestic for home. I never really liked American beef and it now seems almost inedible, or at least flavorless, by contrast.
The best venison I ever ate was a small, two year old forked horn that happened to be about 100 yards from camp on my last day I had to hunt last season. Easiest recovery ever. We field dressed it and started skinning within minutes, hung it for one cold night and then took it to a local butcher to be hung for a few days. Our family traditionally just hung deer in the shade like many, and I think that accounted for a good part of the “gaminess”, in addition to the local chemise influenced diet here in Northern California. The backstrap was really, really, amazingly delicate and tender.
We eat a lot of wild boar and venison, but I do I miss poultry. Part of the reason I have taken to hunting again is economic, so I haven’t been able to get into ducks or turkey yet, but I hope to when I can get the gear.
Thanks for the excellent blog, Tovar. Your thoughtful and considered approach to hunting makes for some great reading.
Thanks for stopping by, Neil, and for your kind words about the blog. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.
My first deer, a 2.5 year old, 120-pound forkhorn, was delicious. Then again, so was the older (age unknown), 190-pound buck I took a couple years later.
You’re welcome, Tovar.
I’m not entirely sure at what point age and size becomes a factor either. I suspect any legal deer is probably pretty similar at least until they’re old and mossy. The deer from two seasons ago was larger, and also really good. The smaller of the deer was probably raiding the remains of a flower garden leftover from decades ago and thus had better food. We hunt blacktail here, so they’re all pretty small compared to deer back east.
Of the pigs I’ve gotten so far, most were sows between 175 and 250 pounds and were delicious but the couple of little 50 pound roaster pigs were something that one could write long epic poems about.
I add my voice to the comments laying the blame on overcooking, poor prep, bad kills, and Americans getting used to all things sweet and bland. We eat a lot of venison and occasional upland game birds, some wild trout, and meat (beef, pork, chicken, and lamb) that is either grass fed and some that is “finished” with grain. The one thing I always tell people is: beef, what most Americans are used to eating, is forgiving to cook: it is has a lot of fat and is moister than venison, so I’d say overcooking is the #1 problem. Tovar, get a foodsaver like Holly says. It is so useful and pretty much idiot-proof !
I have to be careful about overcooking myself. Though I’ve developed a taste for lightly cooked steak, Cath is still leery of rare meat.
So, Holly and Erik: Any recommendations on a FoodSaver? It looks like they have a host of different models, of different sizes and features, some using pre-made bags, some allowing you to cut your own size packaging from plastic rolls, etc.
Skip the pre-cut bags. If you’re just getting one or two deer a year, a basic model will be fine.
We started with the basic model, but it was never the same after Hank came home from a big trip with a cow elk and 2-3 mule deer. Our last duck season (very successful) was pretty hard on it too, so we upgraded to a tougher model.
A cow elk and multiple mule deer, Holly? Since the chances of all of that coming together in California seem slim, may I ask what state? I’m looking for a moderate cost cow elk hunt with a reasonably good chance of success both in drawing a tag and getting an elk.
I am in the process of switching to a foodsaver too. I just got one. Unfortunately the last pig I got was after sneaking out a little early from work when we were pretty busy a few weeks ago. So I just punted and brought it to a butcher. In the past I’ve done the smaller animals but not the larger, but want to change that. I’m sorry I missed Hank’s pig butchering lecture!
LOL, I guess I should’ve explained that one. It was a hunt on Santa Rosa Island – a package deal.
But it’s not available anymore. This will be the last year of hunts on the island, and they’re all booked. When they’re over, all the elk and mule deer will be exterminated (thank you, Sens. Feinstein and Boxer).
Apologies to Tovar for being briefly off topic. Aren’t those the same two senators who wrote a letter to STOP the removal of non-native axis and fallow deer in West Marin county that were competing with native species? Hmmm.
It sounds like those Santa Rosa cow elk hunts would have been just the ticket. I’ll just have to wait until I win the lottery (either dfg or lotto!) for that elk.
Yep, sounds about right. My state isn’t totally hopeless, but as you can see, we have issues.
Neil, some units of eastern Oregon offer a pretty good bet for getting a cow elk if you are open to doing it via archery tackle, and tags are unlimited. I forget the price at the moment for a tag..
No worries about going off-topic, Neil. I love seeing where these conversations go. Besides, everything is hitched to everything else, right?
My experience with 1-3 deer a year, plus freezing some other meat, and some fish, even some garden vegetables, is that the basic model is a go. I’ve used both the pre-cut bags and those you cut yourself, I find I’m able to re-use them once most of the time, sometimes twice. I think it is an investment that pays for itself. There’s not only the price, but also the question – will you use it ?, and you certainly will use it.
Thanks, Erik. Which model are you calling the basic? I see a bunch of different styles here: http://www.foodsaver.com/Category.aspx?id=c&cid=87
Thanks Erik. I’ve looked a bit at the various units in Oregon. It seems like a liekly contender. For now the high cost of an out of state tag, combined with the challenge of beating the odds of success (about 12%) when I might not be able to scout as much as I’d like might preclude an Oregon hunt for the near future. Then again, the success rate in California for deer is pretty low, but if you’re determined you’ll usually get one. I envy all you folks in whitetail country in that regard.
I have to confess that part of hunting and fishing for me is also saving money in addition to the joy of being outdoors and good food, so I tend to hunt and fish pretty close to home. Business is better these days, so I’m hoping to expand a bit in the coming few years. Elk? It’s a long term dream. Ducks? Certainly.
Holly, There’s always something. I’m a fifth generation Northern Californian, so I’m probably here to stay.
Don’t be too envious of all of whitetail country, Neil. Hunters (and farmers) may be overrun with deer in parts of western NY, IL, WI, and IA. Here in northern New England, though, success rates are low: I find it best not to think about the statistics when I’m in the woods. 😉
Hello Neil, it depends on which unit you hunt and how much running around you can and want to do. I hunted in the Desolation area three years ago and could have gotten a cow on just about every day I hunted. I waited a few days and shot a spike bull instead. Talk about good eating…
I looked at mine and it’s a few years old, V1085, looks like they’ve moved on to a whole new set of models. I’d say it’s most similar to the $130 model, but I’m not sure.
Thanks, Erik!
FWIW, I was gifted a Foodsaver and quickly grew to disdain the plastic bag sealing. For one thing, my model ends up wasting a good portion of the roll of plastic used to seal stuff. For another, I found that the bags do not hold up well in our chest freezer. If they get jostled around in the freezer once they are frozen (fairly inevitable with a chest freezer), the plastic readily develops small tears, which pretty much renders them useless. I still like the Foodsaver, but only for the attachments made to vacuum seal canning jars. I use that function constantly for most of the dried foods I store. It’s particularly useful for seeds (both garden and culinary), nuts, and bulk spices, all of which spoil very quickly. But it’s useful in general in humid environments, or where ants or other pests pose a risk for stored foods.
Holly, Kate, and Hoosierbuck: Thanks for the added thoughts on Foodsavers and other storage strategies!
I keep the bulk of my game meat in a freezer locker at a small meat company. In the summer the temp in the freezer is about -5 F and during the winter it gets down to about -12 F. The meat is wrapped in plastic and then paper (I have them do it). Between the wrapping and the temp, I have found that the meat stays good for about two years. I haven’t tried it with fish yet.
For my fish, I use a vacuum bag that sells with a battery-powered, hand-held little pump, and it takes the air right outa there. For my wild pigs, I take them to a butcher, because they’re too big for me to process in my little apartment, and they do such a good job packaging them. I’ve butchered a beef, turkeys, rabbits, ducks, and chickens before, but I was able to borrow facilities for slaughter, and the packaging for birds was minimal, since I ate them fresh. As an urban dweller, I’ve plugged my disposal many times with fish offal, but got smart, and am really good at filets. I sometime bring home double limits of bass from the ocean, because my fishing buddy doesn’t like to eat fish very often. I’ll sit there and process twenty bass in a couple of hours, and have about ten bags of filets, vacuum packed, and in my upright, usually the same day as the fish feed that I will often throw for friends. It’s good to deal with your own meat, but like I said, I’m an urban apartment dweller, so I have my limitations.
Twenty bass make a pile of fish to handle, no matter where you live!
As for gamey, it means nothing to me. It’s just different, and I’m always amazed when people bring it up. Let’s just homogenize everything, and we can just suck it down from pouches, and satisfy our need to feed without dining!