Does Marisa see a quality difference in the packaging (I can't imagine it can actually read the words)?
Actually, on that note: what would the difference between high grade and bargain be anyway? Flavor ? Picture seems to indicate no. Nutrients? Short of being dirt, doesn't seem much reason for a quality difference since yukkuri can eat a variety of things. Guess it's just a marketing thing?
Yukkuris tend to be like spoiled kids, remember that comic of the Reimu wanting the "easy clothes" that saw on the tv? this probably the same, just remplace the clothes with the food.
Being honest, this situation could be used as an interesting experiment, let's say we make it obvious we change the food to this spoiled marisa, like, make her look how we fill the bargaing stuff on the high grade box, and after a few hours when the time of munch munch comes, let's see if she actually remembers or if she forgets because of "HIGH GRADE BOX".
Personally, I think that low quality/bargain food would be made out of things like bad/damaged vegtables unfit for people, or even recycled yukkuris, while high grade would be proper sweets and good quality vegtables and fruit. For the people that want to take really good care of their yukkuris, it might have extra nutrients and things just to be on the safe side to ensuring they have a good diet even if it is unnecessary. But yeah, I don't think a yukkuri would be able to tell the difference taste wise...
I know I used the term "nutritious" quite a lot in my own fanfics... but I have got to wonder what nutrients yukkuris would need. "nutritious" = more sweet or more tasty? Or "nutritious" = vitamins and minerals....
For yukkuri, I lean towards more sweet/tasty. But also more easy to digest. So nutritious things have a soft, wet consistency as well as being of "sweet" properties.
Reminds me of a joke/test that's frequently done on some people. Basically, one party serves the other with some really high class food, when in actuality the 'high-class' food is really some stuff thrown together on the cheap or even some microwaveable stuff, all dressed-up to look like higher class food.
A lot of people won't be able to tell the difference. Basically, if you tell them it's all good and nice and present in such a way, they will accept it and sing praises for it at the end of the night for how great their meal was - even though their meal was nowhere near the quality or standard they thought it was.
It's probably even easier to do to yukkuris - just change the cover and they'll do their 'MUNCH-MUNCH HAPPINESS~' thing all night long...
that's arrogance, they just want the good and the best, for me, the yukkuris only like sweet things, no matter where it came from, as long as you do not show the package. They do not need a balanced diet with vegetables of high quality, only candy you buy at any supermarket...
Since almost everything they eat gets turned into their respective filling, quality is not that important. Though, giving a beloved pet something that could kill it is a bad idea.
@ID - We don't even need to change the cover for the product when selling to humans. I wonder if that makes us dumber than Yukkuris at times.
It's a noted aspect of human psychology, that a large part of our "happiness" with something depends on its presentation.
A broad swath of psychological and economic research has shown that people will pay different amounts for the same item depending on who is providing it. The economist Richard Thaler, in his 1985 “Beer on the Beach” study, showed that a thirsty sunbather would pay $2.65 for a beer delivered from a resort hotel but only $1.50 for the SAME BEER if it came from a shabby grocery store.
Or to put it in another set of terms, $1.50 TV Dinners passed as Kobe Beef, water from a garden hose disguised as "Imported Pure Amazon Riverhead Water", and $2.00 wine poured in a $2000 bottle winning awards is our version of High Grade Yukkuri Food.
Well PIE there is a difference, i make a paralel without claiming they are people, you make the paralel for the only purpose of claiming they are people.
to me this reminds me of that one show were they gave dogfood for humans (but didn't told them about it) and they said that it wasn't bad. Only after when they told them it was dog food they suddenly started feeling ill and throw it up and stuff...
Hmm, sorry for necromancy but i actually had to comment something that suddenly popped out in my mind while re-reading the comments here.
I think that people forgot about the fact that, in general "cheap food" DO taste way different than "high class food" in a way or other, at least for stuff as simplistic as pet food or beberages.
One can easily tell the difference between a really cheap brand coke and a typical coke without the labels, out of the taste, so i don't think that we may be as easy to fool as yukkuris. Specially because at the end there is a lot of "belief" magic and ultra simplemindness behind their thought patterns, the same shit that "smell bad" yesterday, today becomes "delicious munch munch" for them, even if they crapped it themselves. So even if they had tasted something before, they may forget it's actual taste and only have a mental image of "high grade sweet = happiness" and stick with it, regardless if the next "high grade stuff" doesn't taste the same, they work more psycologically than biologically in the munch munch aspect, unlike us who are in the middle working both biologically and psycologically.
It's a bit more complicated to fool humans if they can tell the difference through taste, specially if you let them have a example taste that they can recall each time they try a food or drink plus many times we let ourselves be "fooled" (more like just accepting the obvious ruse out of being more conserned by drinking or eating something) and go on with the charade, like when you buy those pricey drinks or food on your vacations, knowing damn well you can find as good and cheaper stuff somewhere else, but you are on vacation and have a hard time finding anything that isn't expensive so you go "what the hell, you want to sell me this typical bottled water as amazonian water? ok whatever i'm thirsty!".
Once again sorry for the necromancy, but i really felt like adding this after checking the pic again and recalling a few chats i had with people and their experience with "over priced stuff" in vacations and stuff.