Web Video / Food Theory

On July 23, 2020, Matthew Robert "MatPat" Patrick created the channel "The Food Theorists", aka "Food Theory". The channel kicked off with five episodes with topics ranging from the physiological and emotional manipulation grocery stores employ to get shoppers to spend more to the Kool-Aid Man's history and connections with the Marvel Universe. It serves as the bottom left "Yellow" segment of the circle.

On March 7th 2024, MatPat stepped down as the head of the show and Santiago Massa took over on March 19th.

Tropes found in Food Theory:

• April Fools' Day: For 2021, they did a theory on how the universe of the Grubhub animated commercials took place in the future of the Jimmy Neutron universe. For an April Fools video it was surprisingly well thought out. For bonus points, a couple of months later, Grubhub sent Mat and Steph a package with a mix of subtle and blatant hints that they might have actually been on to something; along with some additional things to analyze, including an animatic of an unreleased commercial.
• Ascended Meme: A common joke in the comments when the channel first launched was that it was started so that the crew could write off their meals as a business expense on their taxes. As Mat and Stephanie are testing their two turkeys in the Spatchcocking episode, Stephanie replies to Mat's joy about having two Thanksgiving turkeys by pointing out they're both a business expense.
• Awesome, but Impractical: In "Could You Eat Your Clothes to Survive", eating one's clothes turns out to be this, as there are vanishingly few clothes you could safely eat ^note Most clothing material has zero nutritional value, meaning you'd burn more calories than you take in, which would be dangerous in a survival situation. Leather is the sole exception, and even then it's a massive crapshoot, as its edibility is heavily dependent on treatment methods or any dyes used during production. Instead, it's recommended you wear your clothes to stave off hypothermia.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor:
  • Dan can't resist taking a few jabs at Mat and Steph while narrating the Mountain Dew Pizza episode. In particular he calls them out for forgetting to add the green food coloring to the stuffed crust until too late and scrambling to put it back in, despite his script implicitly telling him to say they added the food coloring when they should have and try to cover it in the editing. There's also this:
    Mat: (holding up a cutting board covered in chopped onions) invoked Liek if u cri evrytiem.
    Dan: (over a screenshot showing that meme originated in 2011) And to think he gives us a hard time about the dated memes...
  • Dan got a chance for a couple more jabs in the outro of the buffet episode, when Mat is questioning past Mat's prop choices which mixed real props with motion tracking.
    Mat: (Annoyed Dan Avatar slowly rising from the bottom of the screen) I decided not to get an actual key and instead made the editors motion-track a JPEG into my hand.
    Crazed Dan Avatar: A PNG! IT'S A PNG MAT!
    Mat: And then later I held a practical plate in my hand, but needed a motion tracked meatball on that plate? Like, what is Greenscreen MatPat's relationship with his environment?!
    Angry Dan Avatar: (yeets the footage off the screen and shakes angrily) I DON'T KNOW MAT! BUT I HATE IT!
  • In the second episode on eating your Christmas tree, Mat tells the editors to put up a chart of different cookies with different amounts of sawdust by weight and percentage, and an avatar (not Dan's this time) calls him out for telling them how to do their job. The second time he does it, the charts are placed conspicuously opposite of where he's pointing. He even lampshades the fact that his editors probably didn't do as he asked.
• Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: Three episodes so far have been dedicated to testing cures for such sauces, and in the process pinning down the specific factors that make a good spice chaser.^note Acidity, dairy (let the record show that these two are mutually exclusive—acids strong enough to help with spice will curdle milk), cold temperature, viscosity, sweetness, and oils being the big winners among the food-based options, with a simple nose plug found to also severely minimize spice-related pain. Also, avoid alcohol like the plague—it just makes it worse.
• Boring, but Practical: After three episodes where Mat and Steph used all kinds of science to concoct the perfect spice chaser, they discovered that all of their entries were topped by a simple nose plug.
• Broke the Rating Scale: Mat gave dish soap a "stupid out of 10" regarding it being a spice chaser; though it barely earned a D on their normal grading scale since it did technically relieve some of the spice pain, and stayed just above the lowest ranking on their tier list by at least not making the pain worse like alcohol-based chasers did.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Played with in the second burger episode, where Mat and Steph are experienting with different burger stack ingredients. Once they toss their own preconceptions out the window and just let Foodpairing dictate what should go on their burgers, they got some weird combinations that nonetheless turned out surprisingly palatable.
  • "Computy-Patty": It starts okay enough with ciabatta bread for the bun, beatroot leaves, and gruyére cheese. Then buckwheat honey and hummus were chosen as the condiments, capping off with chipotle peppers and bacon, plus canned tomatoes in place of freshly sliced. The flavor was apparently similar to spaghetti and meatballs.
  • "Dissonant Burger": Normal pickles, ketchup, and lettuce; but also horseradish, brie cheese, potato chips, and bell pepper, all on white sandwich bread. While it wasn't mindblowingly good, they enjoyed it enough that Mat said they'd consider adding most of the weirdo ingredients of this one onto their burgers in the future.
• Damned by Faint Praise: More like "damned by lack of faint praise" - when Mat took a look at the supposed benefits of alkaline water, he noted that Dr. Oz, a man famous for endorsing nearly every fad supplement, notably refused to endorse alkaline water. This was, to Mat, the final nail in the coffin regarding alkaline water's benefits.
• Dark Horse Victory: When Mat and Stephanie did a diet soda taste test, the winner was not Mat's preferred Diet Coke, but instead was Harris Teeter brand diet soda - Harris Teeter being a grocery chain in the southeast. Adding to the darkhorsedness of the victory is the fact that they only grabbed this particular soda at the last minute to fill out the bracket.
• Don't Try This at Home: In "How Long Could You SURVIVE Locked In A Grocery Store?", Mat explains that factory sealed foods such as peanut butter or cereal will not become inedible after their expiration dates, even though they will become stale or rancid. An editor's note promptly appears advising viewers against going home and trying to eat expired foods, explaining that one should only resort to that in a survival scenario.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: This episode was originally intended to be the Food Theory pilot episode; this didn't happen because Food Theory launched during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they decided an episode on buffet restaurants during a pandemic lockdown would be in poor taste. When it finally aired early July 2021, when things were beginning to reopen, it features a different intro and a live-action MatPat on a greenscreen with motion tracked props.
• I Ate WHAT?!: In the second episode regarding eating your Christmas tree, Mat baked a few different Christmas cookies with varying levels of sawdust and had Stephanie act as a blind tester, passing them off as just a spontaneous treat for her. She was suspicious from the start (the cameras and the microphones being pretty big clues that he wasn't just being nice), and less than amused when Mat came clean.
• Inherently Funny Words: "Spatchcocking", referring to a method of turkey cooking discussed here.
• Klatchian Coffee: "This Lemonade Could Kill You" discusses Panera Bread's Charged Lemonade, which contains over 260 mgs of caffeine per regular-size serving, more than double what you get in a cup of coffee. This isn't helped by how its marketing obfuscates its extreme caffeine content, encouraging customers to drink several in a day.
• Nutritional Nightmare:
  • Mountain Dew Pizza. Everything except the cheese topping has Mountain Dew involved at some point in its prep time. Mat describes it as the one pizza that actively makes you want to brush your teeth after eating it^note Amusingly, when he described the plan for the episode to his dentist at a recent appointment, she actually covered her ears and told him to shut up.; and Dan notes that each slice has the same amount of caffeine as a can of Pepsi, due to caffeine being thermally stable enough to survive the baking.
  Dan: I can feel all the sugar in my veins, and I'm just reading the script! This is the worst sounding thing I've ever had to read!
  • The second spice remedy episode pointed out the downside to milkshakes being the top dog as far as spice chasers was that fried chicken wings already aren't the most healthy meal out there; chasing it with what is essencially ice cream isn't gonna do your waistline any favors.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": In the intro to the Corona Beer episode.
  (MatPat and Luke on a video call)
  Matt: Next item on the agenda...Luke, forecast says you're about to have sun tomorrow? I'm gonna need you to perform an experiment for me.
  Luke: You mean—you mean I get to leave the writer dungeon?
  Matt: Not only are you getting out of the writer's dungeon, I'm actually gonna have to ship you a bunch of beer to drink as a part of this experiment.
  Luke: (Mouth agape for several seconds)
  Matt: Luke? You OK? Honestly, if you're not comfortable with that, that's totally fine! I'm sure one of the other researchers will be more than happy t—
  Luke: (now holding two cans of beer and wearing a soda hat with two more cans) Nonononononononono I can be convinced.
• Onion Tears: One episode was dedicated to finding ways to avoid these; the winner was freezing the onion before chopping it, though having a slice of bread hanging out of your mouth was also surprisingly effective, if less practical. Also Matt is apparently immune to this trope, which he theorizes is due to the nerves in his eyes being less sensitive after two decades of wearing contacts followed by eye surgery.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors:
  • Attempted here during one round where Mat and Stephanie disagreed on a winning soda in one of their semi-final brackets (trying to find Mat a new favorite diet soda). After six consecutive tie games, they took it as an omen and brought both sodas into the final round against the other semi finalist winner.
  • Used again in the second burger episode to determine who would taste-test the Dissonant Burger. After the first round ended in a tie, they lampshaded that they tend to play a lot of mind games with each other when it came to rock-paper-scissors. Fortunately, this time it ended at the second round with Mat winning Scissors-beats-Paper.
• Shout-Out: In the Twix episode, after showing the backstory of the Left-Right rivalry, he mentions the brothers hiring mercenaries to fight the others mercs
• Sick Episode: The Mountain Dew Pizza episode, where Dan fills in for Mat while he's recovering from an illness.
• Signing Off Catchphrase: "But hey! That's just a theory: A Food Theory! Bon appetit."
• To the Pain: When they're about to test their winning spice chasers against the new iteration of The Last Dab, Mat decides to read the description of the Apollo pepper it's made from out loud. You can watch Stephanie get more panicked as he keeps reading.
  Mat: The heat profile of the Apollo pepper is akin to having your head slowly lit aflame. You feel the fire consume your skull, your tongue smoulders, burning tears pour from your eyes. And then five minutes later the ride is over, your heart rate returns to normal...(Solid Snake alert sound effect as Steph looks particularly panicked at this one)...the panic subsides. This Pepper. Is like. No other.
  Steph: Your...heart rate?! [...] I think I have a heart condition and need to sit this out.
• Trauma Button: Downplayed. When olive oil was brought out as a potential spice chaser, Mat noticed Steph's mood go from bad to worse and asked what was up. Turns out she was dared to drink it as a child and it wasn't a pleasant experience.
• Working Through the Cold: Defied. For the episode on Mountain Dew Pizza Mat's voice is strained by illness so editor Dan narrates the episode.

---