Well, if you give them just your leftovers, it wouldn't be good for them, unless you select very carefully and also eat a lot unsweetened muesli or such yourself, but you can share your food as treats and your rats will love you for it.
For a while I tried to feed my rats on a homemade mix of grains and stuff but rats don't really like raw grain all that much, so they prefer the processed kibble type you find in rat food mixes to plain natural grain.
But they love cooked potatoes (also cooked rice), actually I've never fed a raw potato to a rat. They like them even better if you mash them with butter and cream. They will also steal potato chips from you. Sick or elderly rats will often still eat a little cooked food even if they aren't interested in their regular food anymore. The absolute favorite of most of my rats were fluffy scrambled eggs. Whenever I made eggs or potatoes or rice for mysrlf I gave them some.
You have to be careful with dairy, because they will get diarrhea from too much lactose, but they like unsweetened yoghurt a lot. Cheese is a bit too fatty and salty, though they also like it, but small pieces are fine.
Too much cooked food isn't ideal for them, because it's too high calorie (they easily get overweight if their food is too rich) and they need to chew hard things for their teeth and such, but if you let a rat choose between a raw carrot and a cooked one it will almost always eat the cooked food. Same if you offer cooked grain or raw grain. Fresh bread isn't ideal, but you can give them stale hard bread that works for gnawing etc.
I've never given mine spicy leftovers or such or more than tiny bits of sweets, but you can share many foods with them that make proper rat food (in that it's not unhealthy or causes them gastrointestinal upset, which you do not want either, rather than dry almost odorless poop pellets.. )
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For a while I tried to feed my rats on a homemade mix of grains and stuff but rats don't really like raw grain all that much, so they prefer the processed kibble type you find in rat food mixes to plain natural grain.
But they love cooked potatoes (also cooked rice), actually I've never fed a raw potato to a rat. They like them even better if you mash them with butter and cream. They will also steal potato chips from you. Sick or elderly rats will often still eat a little cooked food even if they aren't interested in their regular food anymore. The absolute favorite of most of my rats were fluffy scrambled eggs. Whenever I made eggs or potatoes or rice for mysrlf I gave them some.
You have to be careful with dairy, because they will get diarrhea from too much lactose, but they like unsweetened yoghurt a lot. Cheese is a bit too fatty and salty, though they also like it, but small pieces are fine.
Too much cooked food isn't ideal for them, because it's too high calorie (they easily get overweight if their food is too rich) and they need to chew hard things for their teeth and such, but if you let a rat choose between a raw carrot and a cooked one it will almost always eat the cooked food. Same if you offer cooked grain or raw grain. Fresh bread isn't ideal, but you can give them stale hard bread that works for gnawing etc.
I've never given mine spicy leftovers or such or more than tiny bits of sweets, but you can share many foods with them that make proper rat food (in that it's not unhealthy or causes them gastrointestinal upset, which you do not want either, rather than dry almost odorless poop pellets.. )