Think about how many times you were playing a video game in which you had to pick up food from off the grimey street and eat it to stay alive. It's so common that people rarely ever question the concept. But I do. Well, now anyway. First of all, if you found a large cooked turkey (with potates and veggies on the side) on a ghetto street, would you eat it? Would you? What about out of a garbage can? A nasty, rat infested garbage can full of boogery tissues, clipped toenails and "used" diapers? Unless your ame is Joe Carrier Monkey, the answer should be NO! And what about pork? Sometimes you find pork in the garbage. That's how you catch Trichinosis, man! How are you supposed to get health points back when you've got trichiniosis? Eatin' swine out of a ghetto garbage can... that's just mad nasty. Plus, what kinda city is this where people put perfectly prepared meals in the garbage? With side dressings? Who are these people that prepare thse perfect dinners servings just to dump them in the trash. Not to mention the other stuff you find in the garbage in these games: deli sandwiches, diamond rings, gold coins, 3-layer cakes, beef roasts, etc. Despite what you've heard, the ghetto ain't that fabulous.

Danny, a fine contributor to some of these Minus World features, brought up a pretty good point long ago: Castlevania. Lemme ask you a question: if you dropped some food on a Castlevania floor, would you pick it up an eat it? Think about it. That place is overrun with 5 boozillion types of creatures THAT AREN'T POTTY TRAINED. In other words, Castlevania is covered with the body hair, parasites, ectoplasmic residue, mucus and waste from a nearly infinite legion of mythological beasts. That '5-second rule for dropped food' crap would not apply here. You'd be better off sopping up a CSI crime scene with a biscuit than messing around with Castlevania's viddles. I don't even want to imagine what sorts of diseases you'd catch just walking through there, much less eating a potted meat off of it's floors or food found in a broken brick. If you ask me (which you didn't), Dracula should shift his focus from Belmont-killin' to hunting down the greedy food-hoarder that keeps sticking delicious foodstuffs in the walls. Since it's the only thing keeping heroes alive long enough to kill Drac in every game, you'd think it'd make a to-do list. Then again, I guess he figures that no one would be stupid enough to eat a loaf of french bread covered in Flea Man dandruff and Warg urine.

Here's a few special cases of food found in nasty places.
	Final Fight: This case is downright infamous. Before the boss of the stage (corrupt cop extraordinaire Edi.E) commences to brutalizin' you, he stops chewing a giant wad of gum and spits it on the ground. Like almost any other food item in the game, you can pick it up and recover some health. As a side effect, you also lose your dignity for scarfing a wad of Already Been Chewed gum.
	Brawl Brothers: That chicken leg doesn't come from any sort of container like a fast food container, aluminum foil wrapping or even a rusty steel drum. No, this chicken leg is just floating down this man-made stream. Maybe it's part of a water treatment plant or maybe it's the world's cleanest sewer. Either way, there's just something about a mysterious, soggy chicken leg that just floated by from who-knows-where that seems unsafe. Maybe that's just me.
	Castlevania: Again with the mysterious brickmeats. If you want to nitpick, you could wonder why older video game fans never questioned the fact that edible food would fall out of a brick. The thing is that we appreciated what we got, unlike the young punks of today. Simon couldn't just find some medieval hooker, give her a money bag for 'a good time' and get health back. Oh no. He had to eat food from the bricks of Castlevania. Sometimes there's little pieces of rock in there, too. If you think passing a corn-filled turd is uncomfortable, trying crapping out a chunk of Castlevania.

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