In Tokyo Ghoul:re you never see Sasaki's team eat any human meat, but we see them eat something that looks like a normal christmas dinner ( I think it was christmas)... I'm confused, aren't they supposed to be ghouls? :/ You thoughts about this? :)
Hi! Yes, you were right, the Quinx Squad were eating normal human food at Christmas. Although they are technically half-ghouls, they still retain a lot more human traits than the half ghoul’s that Dr. Kanou creates (Sasaki, Seidou, the Twins) so they’re kind of in a category by themselves at the moment. This is because their implanted kakuhou is coated in quinque steel and has different level frames that limit the kakuhou’s effect on human bodies:
If we go back to the first few chapters of TG, we find that ghoul’s can’t digest human food presumably because they have a digestive enzyme that only breaks down nutrients in human flesh (I’m guessing this is to digest RC cells in the human flesh):
The structure of a ghoul’s tongue and tastebuds are also different to a human’s, making food taste bad and inducing the urge to vomit if ghoul’s consume human food:
These changes all happened to Kaneki because his kakuhou had nothing separating it from his human tissue and he got the full effect of the implantation.
With the Quinx, the quinque steel coating and frames reduces the kakuhou’s ability to make changes in the body. Their digestive enzymes are still human and there was no effect on their tastebuds. This is how they can eat human food to obtain nutrients instead of eating human meat.
However, it is thought that if they reduce the layers of frames around the implanted kakuhou that this might change. Urie had the frame reduction surgery, making his kakuhou go from 40% working capacity to 60% (I think off the top of my head). Afterwards, he gets a whiff of his paint to check if his senses have changed:
He expected that his body and senses would become more like a ghoul’s; a risk of the surgery. Suspiciously, after his surgery we haven’t seen Urie eat anything. Not at Christmas Dinner, not at the promotion ceremony when everyone else was eating the hors d’ouevres, nor in any other scene where other characters are clearly eating. There are suspicions that the frame surgery went too far and he might not be able to fully eat human food now (or if he can, that it might not taste very nice so he chooses to eat in privacy so no one suspects). Even though the Quinx can eat human food, there’s no guarantee for the future!
