Food Theory: Yes, You SHOULD Eat Your Pokemon!

hello there welcome to the world of pokemon my name is matpat people call me the food theorist this world is inhabited by creatures called pokemon for some people pokemon are pets others use them for flight as for me well i slice them up and eat them i mean where else in the world of pokemon am i supposed to get my protein steaks don't grow on trees you know but appleins certainly [Music] do hello internet welcome to food theory the show that's part of a balanced youtube diet provided you're also consuming the content of our sister channel game theory speaking of game theory make sure you round out your daily meal of online content consumption with a taste of our newest episode all about how the character nurse joy is secretly a pokemon that's right i am doing a collab with myself because why try to have friends when you know you can just make a new channel and be your own best friend anyway let's talk about pokemon and food shall we i see this question asked all the time do people in the pokemon world eat pokemon what would the tastiest pokemon be if they ate pokemon and here's the thing friends both of those questions have been answered yeah people eat pokemon the franchise doesn't even try to hide that fact like appleton the evolved form of applein whose pokedex entry literally says that children will eat it as a snack appleton its body is covered in sweet nectar and the skin on its back is especially yummy children used to have it as a snack and then there's farfetch'd a pokemon that was apparently so delicious it was hunted to the point of extinction slowpoke's tail is considered to be a delicacy shuckle eats berries that mix with its body fluids to become a delicious juice and over in the world of the pokemon anime ash even outright asks professor oak if he's eating his crabby wait a minute professor you're not eating my krabby are you don't worry that krabby of yours is too small to make a very hearty meal on the other hand the krabby that gary caught would make an excellent dinner look here's the thing i could sit here all day reading at pokedex entries about edible pokemon but that's a topic that's quite frankly been done to death at this point and honestly all those questions miss the point the biggest question of all isn't whether people eat pokemon or which is the most delicious it's actually what people in the pokemon world would typically eat what would a kanto or johto citizen's diet actually look like i mean sure we know that far-fetched is some sort of rare delicacy but if pokemon are like the plants and animals of our world by extension most of the pokemon should be edible scientists estimate that there are around 400 000 unique plant species on planet earth and that somewhere between 200 and 300 000 of them are edible and yet despite such huge numbers of edible things our regular diets tend to be somewhat limited sure we can eat lobster and crab on a regular basis but the average person in america eats less than a third of a pound of crab meat and lobster per year out of over 220 pounds of meat they actually consume instead it'd be more accurate to say that our proteins are just variants of beef pork chicken and dairy same with plants our plant diets wind up being a small handful of fruits and veggies relative to the absolute massive number of vegetation that exists and as someone who's interested in the world building of the pokemon universe i'm not concerned with which pokemon could be eaten my guess is that most could be eaten if you tried rather i want to know which pokemon would be most likely to actually be eaten by a regular civilian where do most of the people in the pokemon universe derive their sustenance from in my personal pokemon farm simulator which is definitely a game that's going to be coming from nintendo one of these days what species of pokemon should rancher matpat be raising so pour yourself a nice cool glass of moo moo milk and fire up the grill for some toro steaks cause we're getting ready to chow down on some fresh fictional food to figure out which specific species of pokemon would provide the most optimal food source we're gonna consider two things here the economics of farming based on real world comparisons as well as what we directly know about the canon of the pokemon universe let me begin by asking you a question why do we use specific animals for food it's like that example that i brought up before our protein could come from lobsters and crab mussels and oysters but statistically it doesn't instead most people watching this channel probably have a diet where they get most of their protein from sources like dairy eggs poultry pork and beef but why is that well like most things in the world it all boils down to one thing money farms are a business just like any other and as such the goal is to produce as much food as possible while spending as little money as possible the cost of raising livestock can depend on a large number of factors for instance in the u.s where we have an abundance of land that can serve as pastures for cattle and an abundance of water to keep those pastures green beef is actually one of the most profitable animals for farmers to raise however in other parts of the world land and water are much more scarce in many drier parts of africa and asia goats are actually the more economic alternative because they require less water to raise so if they're more economical then why don't american farms raise goats then too well goats require more labor for each gallon of milk and each pound of meat they provide so for places that have an abundance of labor and a scarcity of well-watered green pastures goats make more sense but over in america where labor is relatively expensive and land is cheap cows are the economical choice however there is one thing that seems to hold true no matter where in the world you are poultry is far and away the most efficient meat source according to livestock farmer and author kathy mccoon broilers that's the industry's word for chickens that are raised for their meat not their eggs are the cheapest meat source available for american farmers costing 97 cents per pound of meat to raise by contrast pigs are at a buck 69 per pound and grass-fed beef is a buck 64 per pound so by raising chickens farms are saving about 40 percent it's true in economic terms it's also true in caloric efficiency that is how many calories of feed it takes to produce a single calorie of edible meat i.e for every 100 calories of feed a chicken consumes we get 13 calories of chicken back compare that 13 for chickens to the 8.6 that pork provides and a poultry 1.9 that beef provides obviously it's not just the meat that the farmers have to consider here there's also byproducts like milk and eggs other sources of animal protein crush it on the efficiency metrics whole milk has a caloric efficiency of a whopping 24 eggs not far behind at 19 so those are gonna be the main pokemon protein sources that i'm gonna focus on what would be our best dairy pokemon and what would be our best ranch pokemon to raise and then slaughter for the meat and immediately when i say dairy pokemon i'm sure there's one that pops into everyone's mind miltank the thing is it's a cow and it is very well known for being milkable but remember just because a pokemon can produce milk doesn't mean it's the best pokemon for producing milk farms in the pokemon world just like farms irl are gonna be all about efficiency well i'm sure that a super inefficient milk maker might produce some exotic luxury product that one percenters can enjoy with their swanna foie gras and relicanth caviar we're looking for what would be sold to budget conscious grocery shoppers in the pokemon world so when it comes to pokemon farming efficiency there are two pieces of in-game data that i think make the most sense to evaluate the first is the incubation period for those of you who don't know considering that this is the food channel after all pokemon hatch from eggs and each pokemon's egg takes a different amount of time or to be more accurate a different number of steps in order to hatch just to give you a baseline for comparison starter pokemon from gen 1 like charmander squirtle and bulbasaur each take around 5120 steps to hatch the fastest hatching pokemon magikarp needs only a fifth of that 1 280 steps and the pre-evolved forms of rare pokemon like dragonite tyranitar and garchomp take slightly over 10 000 steps to hatch of course you've not only got to hatch your pokemon you've also got to raise them which is why we're also going to consider a second criterion the growth rate for each pokemon after all out in the real world most cows don't get turned into beef until they've had three to four years of standing around converting nutrients from grass and corn into muscle and fat even short-lived animals like chickens still typically take over a month to reach full maturity and the longer it takes to raise an animal or pokemon the more feed labor and other resources have to be invested into raising it while some animals do get converted to meat before reaching full maturity these tend to be more expensive luxury meats for the obvious reason that it's less cost effective to slaughter an animal before it's reached full maturity in fact a lot of luxury food items are luxuries specifically because they're harvesting the food before it reaches adulthood like caviar and lamb so for all those reasons we actually have to factor in each pokemon's growth rate which is going to determine how much experience they require to level up this to me seemed like a pretty good indicator of the amount of resources you'd need to invest into a pokemon for it to grow and reach full maturity each pokemon falls into one of six groups with the overwhelming majority of pokemon falling into four middle groups that have a consistent growth curve classified as fast slow medium fast or medium slow those squiggly lines on the graph by the way are classified by the community as erratic and fluctuating also note that i'm not taking evolution into account this is mostly because evolution honestly isn't gonna be worth it for farmers most pokemon just living out their lives in the wild exist in an unevolved state and unless each farmer has taken each of their pokemon out to battle them repeatedly until they evolve yeah it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for them so with all that information let's go back to miltank despite being the most famous milk producer in the pokemon world miltank is actually one of the least efficient to raise because it sits in the slow experience group by comparison let's look at skidoo and its evolution go goat both miltank and skadoo take the same amount of time to hatch but while miltank is a slow grower skidoo and gogoat are both part of the medium fast group that means that if you're trying to raise a bunch of dairy animals you should be putting your money on skidoo and the pokemon anime actually seems to confirm this in the pokemon xy series ash and his friends discover throughout their travels that skidoo are renowned for being a dairy source for some of the kalos region's most delicious cheeses and ice cream so really i just did all this work for an answer that apparently the anime already knew weird it's almost like they think through the logistics of this world [Music] coughing the poison gas pokemon nope nope never mind so with our dairy out of the way thanks to skidoo the goat pokemon it's time to consider what our ideal meat source would be and since our analysis of real world farming revealed poultry to be far and away the most efficient meat source it only makes sense to put the spotlight on bird pokemon for this analysis i focused only on bird pokemon that can be commonly found in the wild no baked zapdos or fried ho-oh for this table i also looked at those that would fit into the most efficient categories for how easy they'd be to raise and this part is key how much meat you'd actually be able to get from ones that are the fastest to farm remember that bigger isn't always better in the farming world smaller critters are often quicker to grow which is why we eat chickens and not ostriches but once you've figured out which bird pokemon are in the fastest growing category you want to pick out the ones that are going to get the fattest the fastest in sorting bird pokemon by their eggs cycle and experience group i found that somewhat unsurprisingly the fastest incubating pokemon fall into the category i refer to as pidgey clones the cute small flying pokemon that show up early in the game and with a new one appearing in each generation we certainly had a wide selection to choose from pokemon like rookied pikapec fetchling pie dove starly talo hoot hoot spiro third pokemon of other types that appear later in the game or start off as hybrid types like the dark type muckrow and the ice type deli bird invariably take longer to hatch same thing for non-flying birds like piplup interestingly though while all the pidgey clones are fast to hatch not all of them are fast to grow rookie fletchling pied of starley taylo and pidgey all fall into the medium slow experience group while pikapex spiro and hoot are all in the medium fast category when it comes to experience growth so bit by bit we've narrowed it down to our final three but from that list the answer is obvious hoot the owl pokemon besides being one of the fastest growers after leaving the egg when this thing hatches it is a massive chunk of meat weighing it at the truly impressive 46.7 pounds as 21.2 kilograms compare that to the other birds and you see that all the rest of them weigh under five pounds 2.25 kilograms or heck even real chickens that typically weigh in at four to six pounds hoot hoot is just an absolute unit when it comes to putting meat on the plate a single rotisserie hoot hoot is gonna provide enough meat to feed you and your family for over a week but poultry is kind of the safe boring choice right so for fun i went in the other direction and tried starting a hatchery that focuses on super big pokemon like say for instance waylord you want some whale meat on your plate well let's find out if it makes sense as i dug into the data for this part i found a number of really surprising facts like the fact that waylord the giant whale pokemon just weighs in at 877 pounds 398 kilos making it less than half the weight of the horse pokemon mudsdale which clocks in at the whopping number 2028 pounds 920 kilos this horse weighs twice as much as a snorlax the only things that outclass it in weight are legendaries mudsdale is a giant horse that evolves from the donkey like mudbray horses and donkeys are definitely used as a source of red meat in the real world so if you're willing to invest the amount of effort needed to evolve your pokemon after they hatch might i suggest considering the humble donkey in fact the unevolved mudsdale mudbray is just a solid option across the board weighing in at 242.5 pounds or 110 kilos outweighing most other pokemon species based on livestock that are commonly used as sources of red meat even if we include less common ones like reindeer and camels it's outweighing pokemon like tauros miltank stantler buffaland new mole and mudbray is quick to hatch and easy to raise it hatches in a mere 5120 steps same as the other pokemon i just named and it's part of the medium fast experience group which again is better than or equal to all the other pokemon i just listed i was considering doing another pokemon food category for plant-based pokemon for all the vegetarians in the audience who want to know if it's better to make your veggie burger from bell sprout roots or tangle of vines but then that seemed pretty counterproductive considering that one of the biggest reasons to go vegetarian is you know you're not killing a living animal and if you're in kanto and you want to go with a plant-based diet maybe you just go with the real plants that exist in the world that doesn't walk around saying its own name not only will it make you feel less guilty it'll probably put up less of a fight so in summary in the world of pokemon your diet would consist mostly of goat milk and goat cheeses coming from skidoo milk your white meat chicken replacement would be a fine dish of hoot hoot owl meat and your red meat instead of beef would be the donkey and horse meats of mudbrae and mudsdale in fact in the pokemon world i think mudbray takes the trophy home for overall most efficient meat since it weighs more than five times as much as hoothoot while only taking 33 longer to hatch and growing at the same rate after hatching which means that the taste like chicken of the pokemon world would probably be replaced by the tastes like mud bray who knows we could all end up eating nurse joy since after all she is a pokemon remember that new pokemon episode i promised that's out right now over on game theory well this is your chance the link is on screen so you can go watch it right now where i prove that nurse joy a human from the anime is in fact a pokemon i don't always believe all the theories that we produce but this one yeah i like this one a lot make sure you catch that episode by clicking the link you see on screen right now subscribe if you enjoyed what you just watched and as always remember they're all just theories food and game theories bon appetit

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 5,283,694

Keywords: pokemon, pokemon shining pearl, pokemon brilliant diamond, pokemon recipes, pokemon eating pokemon, eat pokemon, are pokemon edible, pikachu, ash ketchum, pokemon sword, pokemon sword and shield, pokemon diamond and pearl, pokemon theme song, pokemon episodes, pokemon food, food theory, food theorists, matpat, game theory, film theory, food theory pokemon, pokemon cards, pokemon opening, opening pokemon cards

Id: 74LaDIdx64c

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 10 2021