Diet

Characters: Heart Pirates. Rating: K. Warnings: None

The cook of the Polar Tang had a difficult job. Feeding twenty daily was a major undertaking, especially as the combination of who did what watch shift and who was in the control room when meant that meals weren't all taken together. And that was before the individual natures of each of his twenty nakama were taken into consideration.

First and foremost was the captain's allergy to gluten. So many staple foods contained the substance, yet he'd been informed very firmly that the captain's allergy was very severe and that the risk of cross contamination should be taken extremely seriously (the captain himself had not been the one to issue that statement, indeed the cook wasn't sure he even knew of it – Penguin and Shachi had been the messengers and it wasn't unknown for them to make calls without consulting their captain, especially when it concerned his own well-being).

The short answer was that gluten-containing foods were banned from the ship, therefore forcing him to place the entire crew on a strictly gluten-free diet. It was at times difficult, especially when something as simple as sandwiches made for a perfect grab and go snack, and enough of the crew had a sweet tooth to occasionally request (demand) cake or other such desserts, but experience was the best teacher and soon the avoidance was second nature.

Shore visits were accompanied by a critical eye, and the cook refused to let anyone else select the food for their supplies, even if he dragged multiple members along to be pack mules. The Polar Tang's ability to submerge, alongside their captain's preference of keeping it so for as long as possible, meant that shore visits were like gold dust in their rarity and the cook had to make sure he had easily enough food to feed all twenty of them for weeks at a time.

If the captain was the only issue, then perhaps life would not be quite so difficult. The second issue was Bepo's ethical issues. Not only did he refuse to eat any meat that came from an animal with fur – which was most of them in the North Blue and still the majority of land-creatures in the Grand Line – but he also showed extreme judgement if he ever caught any of his nakama eating the same. Thus, alongside gluten, all mammals became banned from the Polar Tang's kitchen, because an unhappy Bepo was not a pleasant Bepo (this had ended up an order from the captain after one incident too many where the mink had flown into a longwinded ethical rant that had lasted all the way from lunch to lights' out and would have gone on longer if they hadn't all hidden themselves in their respective rooms).

Fish, while a perfectly reasonable source of food and usually easily obtained, did not quite provide the variety their diet needed ("we're not all Polar Bear Minks, Bepo!"), and so the struggle began to find reptilian and bird meat where possible. If the occasional News Coo disappeared when the cook got particularly desperate, it was never pinned on them (having a submarine was very useful for hiding).

This didn't even account for the general likes and dislikes of the crew (the captain hated umeboshi, Penguin didn't like milk unless it was flavoured, Shachi acted like most green vegetables had personally offended him, Jean Bart wouldn't touch anything if it resembled gruel), and it was a delicate balancing act that had him struggling not to pull his hair out as he tried to find something everyone would eat, and would also keep until their next island visit, whenever that would be.

(He later met the Straw Hat's cook and developed a very definite not-man-crush on the man's ability to not only feed the glutton he called a captain but also to keep all the meals varied and interesting, while catering to everyone's tastes and allergies. Perhaps he should take advantage of their alliance to get the man to teach him his magic).

We all know Sanji's an exceptional cook, but other pirate crews have to make to somehow, especially with larger crews. While the Heart Pirates aren't necessarily huge compared to a lot of the crews we've seen, they're still twice the size of the Straw Hats, and there's canonically two diet requirements (Law+bread, although not necessarily an allergy, and Bepo+mammal meat; Penguin and Shachi's are totally made up, while Jean Bart's is more of an assumption based on what slaves were likely to be fed).

Thanks for reading!
Tsari