Get a veterinarian friend in your life, they have great stories.

In this story time, it's about pet food companies and veterinarian students. See, if a veterinarian recommends a certain food, is any reasonable owner taking their pet to said veterinarian going to not at least try that food? So pet food companies will give enormous discounts to veterinarian students. They want to hook them on it. They'll bring in cartloads of their brand and nearly give it away to the students. My friend had a small side hustle reselling the stuff. His girlfriend was feeding her cat something like $300 worth of the super premium food a month... for the low price of $30. His mother was getting 80lbs of some premium brand dog food every month. It was nuts.

They also, in these little giveaways and 'seminars' put on, answer all the questions the vets might ever be asked by clients later on... which is why this is relevant to this post. See, they'll freely admit that every food is more or less taste-tested by humans first. So when they say 'bacon' or 'pumpkin spice' or such, it's really because the human that tasted it said so (and also because they already knew what it was going to taste like, the folks making the product aren't exactly stupid in the first place).

Also also... how does anyone not know what things taste like before putting them in your mouth? I can think of nearly nothing that doesn't smell so close to how it tastes that it makes no difference. So just go sniff the treat and you can tell.