Money is power
If it were food, it's a dish I'd devour,
EVERY HOUR!
If it were food, it's a dish I'd devour,
EVERY HOUR!
— Aunt Figg, Tom and Jerry: The Movie
Money is one of many things that is used to run society, it allows people to buy virtually anything they want if they have enough to spend and helps to keep the economy in check. So then if money is so valuable, why would some people choose to do something as absurd as literally consuming it? Maybe to show how rich they are that eating a few grand does not affect them, or there's the off chance they just do it for the sake of eating it?
Realistically, doing this would be a terrible idea. The reasons being A) depending on the substance the money is made of, eating too much of it can eventually cause illnesses like blindness from all the built up toxins in your body. B), money tends to get around a lot, so you never know how many germs are living on it. And C), it just doesn't taste very good, you're basically eating metal and drinking liquid paper. So unless you like eating that kind of stuff, it is just not advised. Additionally, D) many countries have laws punishing destruction of legal tender, which consumption would certainly fall under.
May overlap with Practical Currency in cases where currency is food, such as Medieval Japan (koku of rice) and Mesoamerica (cocoa), and with Metal Muncher when a creature can actually digest metal currency. Not related to Tasty Gold. Compare Pooled Funds for another unconventional use of money (specifically, swimming/bathing in it).
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Toriko, Gourmet Coins could be used at the Gourmet Casino but could also be eaten. The higher the value, the tastier it was.
Fan Fiction
- In Teen Titans Tokyo, after Nabiki unknowingly accepted a cursed coin linked to Fafnir, the curse caused her to sleep-eat her entire jar of 1-yen coins. Luckily the curse also turned her into a Weredragon, so she was able to safely digest the mass of coins. She still struggles with a near-compulsion to eat metal coins, noting that the more valuable they are, the better they taste.
Film — Animated
- Tom and Jerry: The Movie: Invoked. In her Villain Song, "Money is Such a Beautiful Word," Aunt Figg claims to love money so much that, if it was food, "it's a dish she would devour every hour."
Literature
- In The Cricket in Times Square, said cricket eats a paper note because he's very hungry due to not being fed.
- Used metaphorically in the Red Dwarf novel Better Than Life; After Rimmer's fantasy takes a dark turn, he is left bankrupt just before his wedding. During the pre-wedding party, Rimmer watches the last of his money being spent, and sees all the guests as consuming great big platefuls of cash a'la Rimmer, devouring what is left of his riches.
Live-Action TV
- 1000 Ways to Die: One story involves a Frenchman suffering from a condition that gives him an addiction to eating inedible objects, with his favourite being coins. When he can no longer obtain any more, he starts eating things like thumbtacks and nails, eventually dying from his stomach being cut open by all of it.
- In the Friends episode "The One With Ross's Thing", when everyone thought that millionaire Pete was going to propose to Monica, Rachel has the following idea...
Rachel: You have to make it a theme wedding. And the theme could be: "Look How Much Money We've Got!" I mean, you could put money in the invitations. You could have, like, little-money place settings. And you could start with a money salad. I mean, it'll be dry, but people will like it.
- On one episode of The Muppet Show, at the end of the song "Money", Dr. Teeth pulls a lever on his keyboard, causing it to spew dollar bills which he begins to consume. He is later shown wiping his mouth as he heads backstage.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- The Dragon Ascendant Prestige Class requires a dragon to amass a huge treasure hoard and then consume it all on its first step to become a demigod.
- Some versions of how a dragon becomes a Dracolich also involve the dragon eating its hoard during the process.
- Most metallic dragons are said to have a fondness for eating precious gems, with the preferred type of gem varying based on the type of dragon.
Video Games
- Bug Fables has Berries. However, there are actually reasons why they aren't eaten (aside from one NPC): they taste terrible to most bugs, and that's precisely why they're exchanged as currency, so this might be a justification/subversion.
- Deltarune Chapter 2 has Spamton G. Spamton, an unsuccessful salesman who was reduced to living in the dumpsters of Cyber City. Dialogue for when you pay him for his "services" or buy an item from him ("DELICIOUS KROMER"/ "[Storing up for the winter]"), plus a couple of his attacks in his fights that involve inhaling dollar signs, suggests that Spamton is eating the money you give him.
- The Kilobats of Going Under are stated to have an insatiable hunger for Styxcoin, a Take That! against cryptocurrency, such that they'll slam into the ground to pick it up. Sometimes, they'll forgo attacking Jackie just to grab some.
- In OMORI, clams are the form of currency, so it doesn't feel out of place that Humphrey the whale eats them.
- In Yakuza 0, Kiryu's combat trainer Bacchus tells him he can strengthen his skills by investing in himself... literally.
Web Animation
- How It Should Have Ended: In How Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Should Have Ended, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Shia Labeouf were eating bowls of dollar bills which were the profits from the movie's success.
Web Video
- Critical Role: Campaign Three: The intelligent automaton Fresh Cut Grass consumes metal to heal himself and has a particular preference for copper coins.
Western Animation
- Cyberchase: In the episode "Trading Places," the kids crash land on an unfamiliar cybersite and have to scrounge up enough currency to rebuild their cybercraft. It appears the locals are especially interested in the stale donuts that they happen to have on them.
- DuckTales (2017): The ancient dragon Pixiu has a large appetite for gold, and the first thing it does upon being revived from its petrification is consume most of Scrooge's money bin. Scrooge is none too pleased about it to say the least, even repeatedly calling the dragon a "cash cannibal."
- Family Guy:
- The episode "Blind Ambition" has Peter consuming a large amount of nickels so he will be remembered for something. Unfortunately, he winds up going blind from nickel poisoning when he wakes up the next morning.
- In "Ocean's Three And A Half", Peter and his friends go to Carter Pewterschmidt to ask for twenty thousand dollars so Joe can pay back his loan shark. Carter refuses, saying that he could give them the money, but it's way funnier to him if he doesn't, then proceeds to blend up the amount of money the guys asked for in a blender and drinks it right in front of them.
Carter: In about an hour, I'm gonna piss away twenty grand.
Quagmire: What? Are you gonna bet on the Knicks? (laughs) I'm sorry, but how often- I mean- Oh, c'mon, nobody thinks that's funny? - Futurama: In "Viva Mars Vegas", Amy plans a heist to steal back her family's fortune and the deed to their land from the Robot Mafia by getting an invisible Zoidberg to eat it all and smuggle it out of the casino. It almost works, until Zoidberg becomes too heavy to ride in the elevator, causing it to drop straight down and giving him enough motion sickness to start burping out dollar bills, leading to the gang getting caught.
- The Garfield and Friends episode "Crime and Nourishment" has Garfield encounter an underground village of beings who eat money and use Italian cuisine as currency.
- The Simpsons: The episode "Homerazzi" has Krusty blending up several hundred dollar bills at the bar of a celebrities-only nightclub and then drinking it, only to spit it back out in disgust.
Krusty: You call this a drink?!
Bartender: No, I never called it a drink. - South Park: In "Manbearpig", shortly after the boys get trapped in the cave, Cartman finds a huge stash of treasure and gold coins while searching for a way out. He smuggles it all out by eating it and getting Stan, Kyle, and Kenny to carry him. When the four escape, Cartman ends up pooping it all out in front of everybody and desperately tries to defend it, only to be informed by a park employee that the treasure is actually fake and only worth about fifteen dollars. The other boys are not happy with him about it to say the least.
- Spongebob Squarepants: At the end of "My Pretty Seahorse", Mystery ends up eating all the money in Mr. Krabs' safe, requiring him and Spongebob to run after her after Spongebob shooed her away seconds earlier.
Real Life
- While not a specific currency, there is a type of gold called E-175 that is actually consumable and is used in some high-class, insanely expensive dishes. This article
explains that gold is actually more edible the higher carat it is, because the other metals typically mixed with gold for products like jewelry are not safe for consumption. Look here for a list of dishes that use this gold.
