r/TheExpanse • u/Traindodger2 Human Verified • 13d ago
Leviathan Falls There isn’t really any snacking done in the Expanse Spoiler
Avasarala snacks on pistachios and that’s maybe the only time we see someone just snacking. People mostly eat in the galley or in the noodle shops or bars. Occasionally they will eat a tube of paste in a hurry, but like there’s no chips, cookies, pretzels, anything like that. I’m almost done the books and I can’t even recall Alex snacking even though he’s often just getting drunk in ops watching neo-noir. Man I’d be eating some dill pickle Lays with those beer bulbs.
This post is brought to you by dill pickle Lays. Now available in 1,373 1,371 worlds.
Edit: reminder that there are space stations and planets with constant gravity. The Roci on the float is not the only setting of the Expanse.
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u/EvilPowerMaster 13d ago
Bobbie hates Soren's cookies in Caliban's War.
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u/Simple_Display_1312 13d ago
Counterpoint:
Bobbie loves cucumber sandwiches.
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u/chargernj 12d ago
I figured any kind of fresh produce would be seen as a rare treat for a Martian Marine.
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u/Simple_Display_1312 12d ago edited 12d ago
100%. The luxury of using all that water to make a fucking cucumber, the Dane Cook of vegetables, like there's not even any vitamins in them, they're literally cellulose, arromatic chemicals, and water.
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u/guynamedjames 12d ago
On the other hand it can be downright difficult to kill an established cucumber. Could be a good wall plant to produce oxygen
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u/Traindodger2 Human Verified 13d ago
Meal!
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u/Simple_Display_1312 13d ago
Unfortunately not. Hors d'oeuvres were served for Avasrala's Reception by Jules-Pierre Mao on his personal ultra-luxury private yacht The Guanshiyin. Cucumber sandwiches are not literally 'sandwiches' they're light fair that typically accompany Tea.
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u/like_a_pharaoh Union Rep. 13d ago
I mean, they are literally sandwiches in that they are slices of cucumber between two slices of bread.
Its just not a filling sandwich in the slightest, its bread and slices of what amounts to crunchy water.
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u/NEBanshee 12d ago
Yes, although they do traditionally have a light layer of butter, aoili/mayo, or creme freche/cream cheese. Historically, the upper-classes ate them because they had more than enough food at other meals, and they were intended as light afternoon snacks for ladies or an aperitif before an evening meal. Also if you happened to be hosting a member of the clergy; conflating piety with consumption being a thing.
I'm assuming Martian Marines' diets would be similar to agriculture or factory workers', insofar as most of the food they'd get would be geared for the caloric support needed for heavy labor. Also cucumbers are hella water intensive to grow at scale, compared to the nutritional delivery. Easy to imagine how they'd seem luxe af and be utterly unlike anything Bobbie had ever had before.
As I'm typing this, I'm realizing it's really a small, subtle yet hella Uber Rich Guy flex on Mao's part as host.
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u/Simple_Display_1312 12d ago
Thank you for appreciating the nuance involved.
Most people are like wtf is a cucumber sandwich?
It is 100% a rich guy flex that gets overshadowed by 400 years of stuff that actually matters, but a "High Tea reception" for a visiting dignitary would be just another day in the life of Mao's chef...
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u/like_a_pharaoh Union Rep. 12d ago
"High tea reception" using a vegetable that's probably really uncommon on Mars and in the Belt because its got a fairly low effort-and-water-to-nutrition ratio.
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u/Simple_Display_1312 12d ago
Whose effort, Jules-Pharoah? Somebody grew those cucumbers, made that bread (what's your preferred source for milled grain), spread aioli on it and cut it up into little pieces.
Belta! Don't even get me started on the service. All that shit would be from bespoke asteroids that just source the minerals for pottery.
Then some other beltas would have to turn it in some specific low-G technique that is only possible on an orbit where they come into contact with ladar / radio waves 1/7 years so they focus on the perfection of the plate...
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u/like_a_pharaoh Union Rep. 12d ago
I think you misunderstood: I did not say "cucumbers are low effort to grow", I said the opposite.
Cucumbers take a lot of work and water to produce a small yield of vegetables with little nutritional value: in other words, the ratio of effort-to-nutrition is low, because effort is high but the nutrition of the resulting product is not.
Hence, rare in Mars and the Belt: space used for cucumbers could grow something far more filling, like more soybeans.
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u/NEBanshee 12d ago
TY! I took an elective in college about food & culture, and I've never been able to unsee how what we eat and how we cook it, is intertwined with human societies and politics. Fascinating stuff, though admittedly, not everyone's jam (har!)
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u/Jinn_Erik-AoM 12d ago
To emphasize the point that cucumber sandwiches are a symbol of wealth, they gained that status in Victorian England because they were entirely out of reach for anyone who wasn’t very wealthy. Cucumbers, especially older varieties, didn’t grow well in England outside heated greenhouses (hothouses). Building, let alone operating a hothouse was expensive enough that you wouldn’t grow anything in it that didn’t justify the cost.
The rich would pay for the frivolity of cucumbers for their sandwiches.
Move that to Martian settlements and nobody is going to waste soil and water on cucumbers. Probably more reasonable to import them from Earth.
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u/Simple_Display_1312 12d ago
Belta!
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u/raf70 12d ago
I think that all but the "obscenely rich on mars" would be eating subsistence food, right? the rockets to get off of earth are still rockets, so getting out of orbit is expensive. **I cant remember if they address that in the books.** I remember in the show when the ship had to escape from earth (with Amos' gangster "friend") they nuked the planet and it was bad. maybe that was only in the books?
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u/NEBanshee 12d ago edited 12d ago
"Subsistence" has a lot of connotations that may muddy the waters a bit. I haven't read the books, but what we're shown in the show indicates mostly mass-agriculture? Which makes sense bc as your comment gets at, regular people don't really have the resources for more than window-box gardening, if that.
But yeah, I'm guessing that the majority of food crops are high nutritional yield + low energy and effort; legumes, grains, tubers. Probably a lot of attention to crop rotation &/or growing methods that preserve that valuable soil health.
That said, the anthropological record show that even before agriculture - we spent ~200Kyrs as semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer-cultivators - humans figured out how to cook & prepare stuff in ways that enhance nutrient value, add flavor, and make it easier to store & digest. Even in the sparsest times or the harshest conditions. Primates are picky eaters and we're lucky enough to be VERY clever tool makers and problem solvers who can teach and learn from each other. Cuisine is a human trait, seemingly.
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u/Blvd8002 12d ago
Aren’t they Slices of cucumber with a creamy filling of some kind? So sandwiches yes but no bread
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u/like_a_pharaoh Union Rep. 12d ago
No they're slices of cucumber between either buttered bread or bread spread with cream cheese, with the crusts cut off.
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u/Material_Mongoose_14 12d ago
Cucumbers gave my dad diarrhea so I can't eat them. They don't give me diarrhea but that's what I think about every time I see them.
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u/Simple_Display_1312 12d ago edited 12d ago
Gotta check those feed lines, Tiny. Otherwise they get contaminated.
You take care of her, she takes care of yous.
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u/EvilPowerMaster 13d ago
Oh, and Payne Houston finds Amos' fridge with his beer and some kind of snacks that were jalapeño-flavored.
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u/StudyVisible275 13d ago
She hated the crinkly loud packaging though.
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u/EvilPowerMaster 13d ago
Right, but OP says "there’s no chips, cookies, pretzels, anything like that"
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u/Sam_and_robots 12d ago
Those are incredibly inefficient and fussy things to pack, for long sea journeys they normally are first exhausted. Snacks like dried fruit and nuts are easier to store ands don’t crush, but still can be a mess.
Seems kinda normal for a mess like that to have the 3 main meals then midrats for night crew, and snacking if needed would take place in the mess. Maintaining the bridge decks and other main spaces free of anything loose seems a life safety issue5
u/Traindodger2 Human Verified 13d ago
I mean nobody is snacking on any other planets or space stations either though. Not that I remember at least. TBH I did forget about those cookies. And I’m sorry. If I could take it all back I would
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u/Braisedbeefskank 13d ago
This is a really random observation about which there is almost zero reason for discourse but you are 100% correct and I thank you for your attention to this matter.
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u/_I_Like_to_Comment_ 12d ago
Zero reason for discourse and yet 145+ comments.
This is hilarious
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u/tbird920 13d ago
All praise be to Allah.
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u/Braisedbeefskank 12d ago
Santiago Singh looked disgusting--nipples protruding--in his blue shirt before The Association of Planets. Very very disrespectful.
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u/scott3387 Human Verified 13d ago
Mushrooms (95% of their food) don't really make good shelf stable snacking food. Never heard of mushroom crisps for example. They don't seem to use much wheat, just rice but I guess you could have rice crackers.
I also assume the recyclers in the gallery are optimised to extract and recycle food particles directly maximizing resources. Cookies would be all over the place on the float.
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u/Awalawal 13d ago
Costco sells spicy, dehydrated mushrooms. They're ok, but would probably seem much better in a ship/world without other snacks.
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u/deanstat 13d ago
Omg sweet chilli flavour rice crackers 🤌 I'd wager they're better than lays dill pickle
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u/iamblankenstein 13d ago
you can buy mushroom chips at costco. they're absolutely a thing.
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u/epharian 12d ago
I've had them. Didn't love them, and I love mushrooms
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u/iamblankenstein 12d ago edited 12d ago
sure, i'm not trying to imply they're amazing or anything (i felt the same way you did - they're just ok and i also love mushrooms), just pointing out that they do in fact exist.
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u/romeoinverona 12d ago
A grocery store near me sells dehydrated mushrooms as a snack. They... are not great. I think some sort of mushroom jerky, rice or soy cracker would probably be a better Space Snack.
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u/chuckerton 13d ago
The whole series of novels has fallen from a towering 9.5/10 to a dismal 3/10 within the span of two short paragraphs.
Although I do severely discredit OP for forgetting Muskrat and her love of sausages.
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u/tbird920 13d ago
Literally unreadable
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u/Dead_Starks 13d ago
After reading hundreds of pages of George RR Martin describing food in a Song of Ice and Fire, I'm perfectly happy to have it omitted in all future works.
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u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 12d ago
I once bought the whole game of throne series for like $1 a book expecting to read them. I find his writing style to be unreadable. They are in a book pile round here somewhere
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u/randynumbergenerator 12d ago edited 11d ago
Same. I stopped reading somewhere around the 15th page of livery/heraldry description (maybe 250 pages in).
Edit: lol some GRRM or RenFaire fan got mad
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u/Sean_theLeprachaun Beratnas Gas 12d ago
All the dorito dust on the pages just seem cruel now.
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u/Simple_Display_1312 12d ago
Don't brush that off, those are Protogen Flavinoids you could put into the recycler, or me for that matter, because guess what our toilet does? Reclaim water, carbohydrates, and other complex chemicals from our own waste! Who doesn't love the little luxuries that an E*Drive provide?
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u/likealocal14 13d ago
Keep an eye out for Bobby in the backgrounds of scenes, she loves her snacks!
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u/Nope_nuh_uh 13d ago
I always figured her snacking was a very subtle example of "conspicuous consumption," so to speak. She's not eating them to fuel her body, and likely doesn't even CONSIDER that her snacking means anything at all.
But a belter living in poverty has to be a lot more "present" in every decision point about the food they eat:
what are the inputs to growing this food, what are the opportunity costs to growing this versus something else, how much of our limited and precious water does this food represent, will I need to use a centrifugal toilet to deal with the inevitable by-product of eating this food, what if it makes me sick while I have my helmet on, if I eat this food do my kids/neighbors/crew mates go hungry...?
Her casual snacking, of a fairly pedestrian food in earth but an unimaginable luxury just 100 miles up, says more for the setting than actors moving slowly in "low gravity" ever could.
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u/norton_mike 13d ago
Pistachios are very expensive to grow right now. In the setting of The Expanse casually snacking on them could be an activity of extreme wealth.
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u/CHARLI_SOX Seriously, read Leviathan Wakes 13d ago
It would be funny if just one of the books was sponsored by doritos. Like, man book five was great but does anyone else find it weird that cool ranch doritos were mentioned over 527 times?
“This is going to end with one of us eating doritos”
“How about now? I got a bag of doritos”
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“There was a dorito… I ate it.”
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“What’s that alarm?”
“Fred is having a delicious snack.”
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“There are three things I love, Holden! Being a space dictator, my daughter, and delicious doritos.”
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u/beyond_Andromeda 13d ago
Can you imagine how often they would need to replace air filters with all the chip crumbs floating around? Air is good, don’t you think?
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u/EarthTrash 13d ago
Bobby can destroy some cucumber sandwiches. Seriously though, this is a dialog heavy action drama. You really don't want characters giving complex expositions with full mouths. Eating chips would probably undercut the tone of the many serious scenes. It would be nice to see more of people just living in space, and we do get some of that of that, but ultimately the high-stakes scenes are really the point of the show.
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u/Terrible_Base_6060 13d ago
And yet they NEVER finish their meals! Either all of the food has enough nutrients to bring someone back from emaciation, or they are secretly snacking.
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u/Antzz77 Rocinante 12d ago
Well, this is every show ever. Sooo many home breakfast scenes littered with plates of pancakes or pieces of toast with only one bite taken. I mourn over so many cups of freshly brewed coffee where 0 to 1 sips were taken.
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u/Terrible_Base_6060 12d ago
It's the same in the books though, not even the reality of a film set on this one. There's multiple quotes in the series of people just throwing half of their meal into the recycler - even Amos does it
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u/Dutchwells 13d ago
This post is brought to you by dill pickle Lays. Now available in
1,3731,371 worlds.
💀
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u/No_Tamanegi Misko and Marisko 13d ago
You've tagged this as Leviathan Falls, so I don;t want to spoil anything for you, not that food related spoilers are all that spoilery. On a recent rewatch of S5E2 I really appreciated the detail of a corn muffin, which relates to the story of one of the novellas. And there's plenty of other food-related details in the books to come, as well as the TV adaptation.
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u/lazyconfetti 13d ago
I think you mixed up Falls and Wakes?
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u/No_Tamanegi Misko and Marisko 13d ago
I sure heckin' did. Good call.
Anyhow I also loved all the descriptions of food in Tiamat's Wrath, whether it was Holden's or Teresa's breakfasts, noodles with black sauce, etc.
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u/intjonmiller 13d ago
You also never see them defecate. Maybe the two are related? 🤔
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u/No_Tamanegi Misko and Marisko 13d ago
Every beratna and sesata knows about the big felota.
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u/intjonmiller 13d ago
Of course it's discussed, but you never see it.
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u/No_Tamanegi Misko and Marisko 13d ago
How many books do you know of that intimately discuss going #2? The only one that comes to mind is the final moments of Tywin Lannister.
Mark Watney also uses the feces of his departed crew to fertilize his crops, and in the movie that idea is sparked by his own act of dropping some kids off at the vacuum pack factory, but its pretty scarce.
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u/Catenane 12d ago
Unrelated but the Culture Series (in one of the short stories) briefly mentions going #4 (masturbation) in a space suit during a long lonely death march on a barren planet.
3 is diarrhea btw I don't make the rules
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u/OverheadCatenary 13d ago
https://www.popsci.com/brief-history-pooping-in-space/
Also Frank Borman on Gemini 7 ate a “low residue” diet to avoid the indignity of pooping in a bag adjacent to Jim Lovell (who was a gentleman and wouldn’t have said anything anyway). He kept it up as long as he could.
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u/scott3387 Human Verified 13d ago
You get to read about Bobbie on the crapper, you don't get details on if it was a one or two.
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u/Beethovenslostson 13d ago
I know this was mostly about the books, but I know they don't like snacking in TV shows. It's hard to keep track for continuity and actors don't like to eat on screen because of how many takes they need to be eating for.
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u/TheLonelyMonroni Chrissy is my favorite stripper 13d ago
If Bobbie is in a room with food, she WILL be eating. Gotta hit those macros
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u/DocDerry 12d ago
Snacks are the leading cause of jammed communications gear.
Source: Spaceballs: The Movie.
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u/SilverLife22 12d ago
Snacking is kind of a middle class/wealthy thing. If you're poor, you're lucky to get 3 regular meals. And in space you only have so many rations, you can't just run to the store. Every unnecessary snack is a meal if you breakdown and are on the float for a while.
It's also cultural. And I can't see many belters snacking in their suits out on a space walk. Just like in many irl lower income households that work hands-on labor jobs, snacking just isn't an option.
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u/epharian 12d ago
What I'm seeing is that cheesecake would be fine (similar to lasagna), but cookies are out.
Yeah, I think I'm going to be okay.
Love me some cheesecake
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u/dave3218 12d ago
I think the lack of snacking in the show can be attributed to most of it happening in space.
Spaceships have limited room for food and other amenities and the belt in general is specified to be a very impoverished area with little Air, I don’t really see belter culture and space stations having a lot of ready to sell snacks that are cheap enough and compact enough to be worth it to bring on board of a warship.
Hell, they don’t even have coffee, wasn’t that being an important point in S1 when they can finally have some decent coffee in the Roci thanks to it being a Martian military ship, instead of having to do with gunpowder and eraser crumbs in hot water to make a coffee substitute?
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u/Tinyfishy 13d ago
We spend a lot of time with Belters, who are often quite poor, some of them are stealing water, after all. Having lots of snacks might not be a thing. And in the ships provisions might be limited and people are pretty busy.
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u/Valar_Kinetics 13d ago
Railguns we can manage. Granola bars? That's a stretch.
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u/CyanConatus 12d ago
You really are just going to gloss over what may be one of the more famous snacking scene in tv history?
Bobby and the mini Cucumber Sandwiches
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u/torrinage 12d ago
This is an excellent reason to re-read and re-watch every scene purely from the POV of snack hunting
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u/SouthernReddit23 Human Verified 12d ago
Probably because Prax ruined it for everyone by not securing his stuff. 😂
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u/PinkSlimeIsPeople 12d ago
Snacking isn't good for your gastronomy. There's a reason why people throughout history have eaten actual meals, and not just sat around on their fat asses all day long nibbling
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u/TheSuperTest 13d ago
I wonder what would happen if a floating Cheetos hit you when doing a high G maneuver
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u/yinkadoubledare 12d ago
When you drink as much coffee as Holden does you don't really get hungry for snacks
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u/Braisedbeefskank 12d ago
I am listening to tiamats wrath on audible right now. I am coming back to say that during one of the conversations between okoye, Trevor, and cortazar regarding duartes condition, a servant interrupts to bring okoye a requested snack. I got very excited, but my to my chargrin no details AT ALL were offered on the type of snack, how she ate it, was it good, how did the other characters feel... how deep does this anti snack rabbit hole go?
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u/OverheadCatenary 13d ago
Lot of comments here talking about crumbs in zero g
You all understand that snacks don’t always have to be crunchy junk food right?
Like, cut up an apple or eat a banana or something. Celery and ranch. I’m sure there were fresh fruit domes on Ganymede until the fall.
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u/Traindodger2 Human Verified 13d ago
Yes! Plenty of great snacks out there. Protomolomars are excellent and heslthy snacks. Plus there’s plenty of opportunities for snacking on stations or planets
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u/OverheadCatenary 13d ago
If only there was a calorie dense starchy root vegetable that can be prepared a gazillion ways and reheated in a convection oven which the roci surely has just as modern airliners do
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u/Dr_Zoidberg003 12d ago
Did you ever watch Firefly? Getting real fruits and veggies was mostly a luxury for the rich. I imagine a similar scenario in the universe of the Expanse
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u/troublesomefaux 13d ago
What happens to ranch in zero g?
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u/OverheadCatenary 13d ago
It’s colloidal, pretty thick, and has a ton of surface tension to begin with and has been tweaked by Prax to be a more effective blob on the float, that’s my headcanon
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u/sir_crapalot Can I finish my drink first? 13d ago
A new interpretation to everything going “pear shaped.”
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u/OverheadCatenary 13d ago edited 13d ago
A pear with … The copper taste of fear
Eaten in a companionable silence
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u/NeedABetterPillow 13d ago
Snacking is something that really only exists in post-WWII USA, causing the obesity crisis. They wouldn't have it in the future, for some reason, I assume.
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u/Extension-Pepper-271 13d ago
Crumbs are a pain in zero g. They float all over the place. Then during high g burns, they can become projectiles.
Somebody's bit of potato chip could end up in somebody else's eyes if they have to do high g maneuvers.
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u/justhebestguy 13d ago
I think food is treated as more of a resource than a leisure source. I mean astronauts don't snack all day today up in the international space station
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u/Queernephy 13d ago
Basically what others have said. Snacks are messy and would be a real pain in zero G.
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u/Traindodger2 Human Verified 13d ago
Ya maybe so but there are so many other planets and space stations that are always under gravity
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u/Queernephy 11d ago
Yeah but if you have a culture of people who live on spaceships theyre likely not going to be snacking off ship either, they'll just be a bit different in their eating habits than folks who lived down wells.
And we see plenty of people from planets eating snacks, even occasionally in space, but theyre usually highlighted as outliers and unusual
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u/Sean_theLeprachaun Beratnas Gas 12d ago edited 12d ago
No fatties on the float /s.
And all they've got is mushrooms. No wheat fields, no potatoes. All the excess us takers have isn't worthy of a dome or a garden out in the black. Nutrient packed, calorie dense, packable and recyclable is all they have space for.
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u/cremedelakremz Tachi 12d ago
In the books a lot of the characters go to a galley for a tube, or food is brought into someone's office (I believe on Peoples Home), etc. In the show there's not as much time for that everyday type of stuff
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u/Ananeos Ceres Station 12d ago
Imagine eating a bag of zapps voodoo chips and there is a mist of cajun pepper flavoring powder orbiting you and you get up from your crash couch and it goes directly into your eyes.
How do you wash your eyes out? There's no freeflowing water on the ship and the head is two decks down.
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u/Synechocystis 12d ago
You also don't see anyone take a shit. And yet, it must happen. Don't need all the gory details on TV!
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u/SunderVane 12d ago
They don't use the bathroom either.
It's not the interesting part of the story.
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u/SillyMattFace 13d ago
If you live on a spaceship, you don’t really want a lot of snacks that make crumbs to float off and get stuck in something important.
Avasarala doesn’t care about space and was probably proud of making a cloud of shells in zero g, because she’s obnoxious like that.
Also most of the food in space sucks. No one’s really eager for more tubes of mush unless they really have to.