Food Theory: Gaston STOLE All the Eggs! (Beauty and the Beast)

Gaston's breakfast routine and Beauty and the Beast give us one of the most iconic Disney lyrics of all time. I mean, just listen to this. How could it not be iconic? Gastón, friend, we have to talk about the benefits of a balanced breakfast. But here's the thing. Not only are his morning gains giving him a cholesterol level that could kill a tank, but his diet is also putting the city around him in crisis. You do not believe me? It is a story as old as time: the economic crisis. Hello Internet! Welcome to Food Theory, the show that never counts its chickens before they hatch.

Today we revisit the Disney classic that continues to provide us with cinematographic and

food

theories: Beauty and the Beast. A story that probably needs no introduction. A smart French country girl wants more out of her life and ends up in a curved castle with talking toilets and an extra furry prince. Singing and Stockholm syndrome ensues. But it's the drama happening outside of The Beast's castle that I want to focus on today. You see, Belle is constantly pursued by the town heartthrob, Gaston, a man who believes that a woman's place is to cook in the kitchen and not read books.

By now, it's pretty clear who the bad guy should be, and who's to say movies weren't "woke" back in the '90s? However, outside of that character trait, when the going gets tough, Gaston really isn't as bad as the movie makes him out to be. When he learns that Belle is trapped in the castle, imprisoned by a giant, hulking

beast

, he rallies the villagers to... And can you blame him? Her fiancé has just been kidnapped by the giant honey badger that lives in the forest outside of town. What other options are there? Sit down and talk about her feelings?

Anyway, I'm not here to be a Gaston apologist. Instead, I'm here to focus on the villainy he presents to the town he calls home. In the villain song of him, the eponymous Gaston. Everyone sings in the bar about how great this guy is. And it's at this point that we get a rundown of his essential life statistics, his spitting habits, and his breakfast routine. The four dozen and the five dozen whole

eggs

. Just let that statistic sink in for a minute. Five dozen

eggs

every morning. This is equivalent to 60 eggs a day, a whopping 21,900 eggs in a single year.

For comparison, a typical person in the U.S. eats about 288 eggs per year, meaning Gaston consumes nearly 100 times that amount. So, with the current global egg shortage in the headlines, I wanted to take a look at Gaston's amazing edible egg habits. Is it possible to consume so many eggs? How many chickens would this village need to support Gaston's breakfast binges? And most important of all, what are the downstream ramifications of someone eating, both literally and figuratively, the entire supply of this shelled staple? Friends, we have a great episode. So let's get to work, shall we? First, let's start with a simple question.

Is it possible to eat 60 eggs in a single day? Now most online blogs will say that the average adult human stomach can expand to hold at most one liter of

food

or about 950 milliliters. However, I have checked the sources these blogs tend to cite and I really don't love the research they have done. I prefer this video from the excellent Institute of Human Anatomy channel, where we see him testing a normal human stomach. And at full capacity, it has significantly less capacity; just 600 milliliters or about 1.2 pints. Basically, the human stomach is the perfect size for a full Ben and Jerry's bathtub.

It's like a match made in heaven. Now, a small egg contains approximately 1.5 fluid ounces or 44 milliliters. So if Gaston ate them raw, he would have about 8,000 milliliters of liquid, four times more than a stomach normally contains. By egg number 14, he would practically be at capacity and still have 46 left. Gaston's stomach would probably burst. Notice, however, that I said "likely." Because 60 eggs have been made in one sitting. In fact, 100 eggs have already been made in one go. In 2013, world-famous competitive eater Joey Chestnut set a new world record for egg consumption by consuming, get this, 141 eggs. Even crazier.

Joey did it in 8 minutes. So while every bone in my body wants to see that Gaston would be dead before the movie even starts. Maybe this man barge comes with an extra large fuel tank. Is that? Is that correct terminology there? What is the name of the gas tank on a barge? Large boat, fuel tank. Oil tank. Yes, that makes sense. It wasn't that far away. So let's say Gaston has an above average stomach. But, if he could eat so many eggs, can we calculate the number of chickens needed to satisfy Gaston's insatiable appetite? As we see in the movie, the chickens seem to roam freely around the town.

So, doing some quick research. A modern backyard chicken can lay an average of four eggs per week, or about 208 eggs in a year. To supply our Gastón with almost 22,000 eggs in a single year, we are talking about 105 hens operating at maximum capacity. Simple, right? This is the easiest food

theory

I've done all year. Well, not so fast. As I have learned after a decade of making these theories. It's never that easy. Egg production varies from breed to breed, so first of all, we need to know what type of chicken is laying these eggs. In other words, we need to discover the geographical location of this poor provincial city.

We know this is France based on the opening song. They make it pretty obvious. But where in France specifically? Someone call the Geofortunes. Although the town is never officially named, the creative team has gone on record saying that the design was inspired by two specific towns in the French region of Alsace, two specific towns whose names make me break out in a cold sweat. There's no way I'm going to be able to pronounce them. I mean, the Australian Macas incident was pretty bad. Oh, let's do our best. Well. It's French. So you're going to merge some of these letters together.

You're going to line up some of these others. rei-queir and ri-boov-oulle (I tried)… I did it! Anyway, both Riquewihr and Ribeauville are located in the northeastern region of France, so we can safely assume that's where we're talking about for Beauty and the Beast. That said, we're not done yet. Of course, it's not that easy. Different chickens began to be raised in this area of ​​France at different times, which means that just knowing the location of the film is not enough. We also need to know the time period. Fortunately, there are a few things that give us a rough idea of ​​when the movie takes place, and most of them come from *sigh* the live-action remake.

Hey, if they had to do it, at least there's a silver lining somewhere. In the remake, they added this completely unnecessary scene where Belle uses an enchanted book to travel to her old house in Paris. It is here that the

beast

sees a doctor's mask and suspects that Belle's mother may have died from "the plague." This most likely refers to the plague of Provence, which took place between 1720 and 1722. In this scene, we see Belle as a baby. Now, according to the animation supervisor of the original film, Bella is in her mid-twenties when the film takes place.

Therefore, the events of this film must occur sometime around 1740. This also lines up very well with when the original fairy tale the film is based on was published in 1740. We also know for sure that the film had to have taken place before 1789. It marked the beginning of the French Revolution, a time when most of the French nobility had fled France fearing for their lives. But the last piece of evidence that really cements this to the mid-18th century is Cogsworth's tour of the castle. It's here that he draws Bella's attention to the ceiling, as we hear him mention again in the Christmas special when the decorator, Angelique, calls the place.

Baroque architecture was characterized by ornate details, many rich, heavy designs with arches and curves and marble. So calling it a baroque atrocity tells us that the castle has become obsolete. And wouldn't you know? But the Baroque style lasted in Europe from the early 17th century and its popularity really began to fade in the 1750s, coinciding perfectly with our rough estimate of 1740 as the date of this film. Why did we talk again about the history of European architecture? Oh yeah. Chickens. That's how it is. That's how it is. I lost track for a second there. This one goes in all different directions.

So knowing the history of baroque architecture in the northeastern provinces of France will help us narrow down our chicken breeds and egg production rates. How ridiculous is that? If this channel doesn't deserve a subscription from you, I don't know what does. Seriously, who else is trying their hardest to get these answers, even though they're answers that aren't asked for in the first place? So I guess we only have ourselves to blame. So the first thing I wanted to do was see if there were any chickens that looked similar to the design of the chickens we see in the movie.

Look, right here in the opening song, we have these brownish-red chickens. Those did not exist in France during the 1740s. Most brown chickens, such as the Rhode Island Red Chicken and the Red Leghorn, did not appear until the 19th century onwards, a century after the events of the film. Now you can understand why it was so important for us to analyze the architecture of the castle. So the chickens we see in the movie are clearly meant to be generic stand-in chickens and are not historically accurate. I narrowed our field to three ancient French breeds of laying hens that predate the mid-18th century, giving me the Houdan, the Bresse Gauloise, and the Fleche.

These hens lay an average of three eggs per week between March and October, but again, it's not as simple as that. You see, egg laying statistics like these are based on modern data with a modern understanding of how chickens produce eggs. Today, farmers understand that a chicken's egg cycle depends on sunlight; A hen needs approximately 14 hours of sunlight to stimulate the pituitary gland for her ovaries to release an egg. This means that in winter, when the sun doesn't shine for as long, chickens produce fewer eggs. Modern farmers can simulate sunlight to get their chickens to meet that 14-hour requirement.

But in the 18th century they didn't have that level of sophistication. This tells us that the total annual egg production back then would have been lower. If we look at a single hen, she would lay three eggs per week from March to October, which would give us 96 eggs. Then, if we look at how daylight is reduced to 8 hours in the other months, egg production slows to two eggs per week or 32 eggs between November and February. In short, a hen in this provincial city lays 128 eggs a year. And all this is assuming that the chickens are at their egg-laying peak and that those evil wolves that happen to live on the outskirts of town don't eat anyone.

Those things are legitimately the scariest part of this movie. If Gaston really wants the beast to kill, he should go after those guys. So, with all this information collected, the total number of chickens needed to satisfy Gastón's protein dose is. *egg roll* 195 chickens! 195. It seems like a lot for a town that actively calls itself small. We can quickly deduce from some of the shots in the first song that this is a town of about a hundred people, which means there are almost two chickens for every person in the town. To put this into perspective, a village of this size should only need 50 chickens to meet its needs.

But here the proportion is actually reversed: instead of one chicken for every two people, there are two chickens for every person. And all those chickens are working overtime to support one guy. It doesn't even cover the needs of the rest of the people. And you see, that last point is kind of important. In the opening song we hear a random line in the lyrics where this woman screams that she needs six eggs. On my first watch. I thought this was because she had many children in her arms. But now I see that it is actually much worse than that.

She screams that she needs six eggs because there are simply no eggs available. Gastón is eating the entire supply and that is reaching all the other farmers in town. What are you going to do if there is a shortage of eggs? Well, we see it right now in grocery stores. You sell your eggs at a higher price. It is called the law of supply and demand. If supply decreases but demand remains the same, that price will increase. This creates a domino effect for the rest of the city. We see the bakerWith his tray as always, he is going to need eggs to be able to bake the food he sells.

If eggs have suddenly become more expensive for him, he will simply adjust his prices to cover his costs and so on for everyone else in town, regardless of the services they provide, such as the butcher or the barber. Everyone will have to increase their prices to be able to buy the most expensive foods. And if you think I'm overthinking this, if you think I'm completely wrong talking about the economic ramifications of a guy consuming eggs in a small provincial French town in a Disney movie, think again. Right here, in the opening song, there are another random lyric.

Clearly, there are some financial problems going on in this town, and now we know exactly who is to blame. Gaston's egg-centric diet has created an economic crisis. He alone is the reason for the increase in prices in the city. And no one seems to notice. I mean, after all, he's the local hero. But feeding this local athlete is costing everyone a lot of time. The villagers desperately need Gaston to cut back on his egg consumption or just get off the map entirely. Ha, I guess some things just work on their own. But hey, do you know what foods aren't going to cause an economic crisis in your local town?

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theory

. A THEORY OF FOOD! Enjoy.