A pause to ponder
Food in Final Fantasy IX

FF9 has a strange, bulimiarexic approach to food. Quina eats enemies. The stork monster eats party members. Party members... eat nothing. At all. When Zidane goes into bars, they're out of the special of the day; when the barkeep offers him a special new dish, he waves it off hastily and claims that he's full. Food shop clerks, standing behind counters filled with pastries and cakes, will talk about the food but will not offer anyone any. A secondary character who dares to insist upon buying a cake misses his shuttle because of it. The one time the party does get to take part in a feast, the food is poisoned. Eating in Gaia is a dangerous act, best performed in full armor in the midst of battle.

Later:

Garnet-tachi just fought a fanged purple worm that vomited out its stomach and spacked Steiner with it.

For a LOT of points.

I give up. The situation is hopeless. Somewhere on Disc 3 I'm going to run into the real Iron Chef, and we are all going to die, because there is nothing more fearsome than a forty-foot-tall iron giant who wields the fearsome power of food.

On to Zidane's deep thoughts on women warriors...