Food Rule
Food Rule
[There is a caption above a list of food with indication whether it is OK or not to eat. Below is another caption.]
My food rule:
Red meat ✓ Pork ✓ Poultry ✓ Fish ✓ Shrimp X Oysters X Squid X Fruit ✓ Vegetables ✓ Grains ✓
I won't eat something if I have to Google to figure out whether or not it has a face.

There are various vegetarian diets which restrict certain foods for ethical or personal concerns. Real vegetarians do not eat any kind of meat, but some only refrain from eating red meat, although this means they are not true vegetarians. Vegetarianism can go as far as to not eating (or even using) any kind of products coming from an animal (i.e. veganism ). The comic is a joke on one of the vegetarian rules, namely don't eat anything with a face . This rule is difficult to follow, because it is subjective whether people think a given animal has a face , causing disagreement about what is allowed and what is forbidden to eat.
Randall presents a list (see details below) of allowed and forbidden food in his diet. For example, he eats meat from typical-looking animals like beef, pork, chicken, and fish. He will also eat plants like fruit, vegetables and grain. But he refuses to eat some of the more odd-looking creatures from the sea like squids, shrimps and oysters. Below the list he explains his rule for what can be eaten: I won't eat something if I have to Google to figure out whether or not it has a face , which is a joke on the disagreements about the don't eat anything with a face rule. The joke is particularly teasing as it allows most (if not all) kinds of meat, which are the most strictly forbidden foods for even the mildest of vegetarians. Randall does not care about food having faces, he is worried apparently only about having to defend the position that some particular food has a face or not. While it's clear, at least to Randall, that a cow has a face and an apple does not, some beings are harder to classify into one of these categories. For Randall this goes for shrimps, oysters and squids; and apparently actual vegetarians also struggle with these creatures, as can be seen in several on-line questions ( 1 ).
The title text gives another rule that also would make these same three omissions. This rule is about not eating invertebrates (animals without a vertebral column , i.e. spineless creatures). As the first four items on the list are meat from four different animals of the type vertebrates (with vertebral column) and the last three items are from plants , that explains why these are all OK to eat. But the middle three items are three different animals of the type invertebrates, which Randall does not eat.
Randall's reason for avoiding invertebrates is somewhat outlandish: he fears that the spirits from creatures he has eaten will come back to haunt him. In horror movies, as well as in video games and roleplaying games with fantastic elements, undead creatures often appear as spooky skeletons (i.e. the Stalfos of the Legend of Zelda ); however invertebrates have no skeleton so Randall can't figure out what kind of spooky undead creature will come after him if he eats them (invertebrates may have a shell or another type of exoskeleton , but these do not look at all like the typical mental image of a skeleton). Randall imagines that he'll be able to fight a typical skeleton, but is afraid of the unknown ghostly creature an invertebrate may become after dying.
The comic may also be a joke on the modern paleo diet trend, which emphasizes eating fruit, vegetables, and meat ("anything with a face").
Randall has previously depicted cuttlefish as spooky in 520: Cuttlefish , and he's also mentioned his dislike of certain foods (namely lobster - another invertebrate) in 1268: Alternate Universe .
Here is a list with explanation for each item on Randalls food list:
[There is a caption above a list of food with indication whether it is OK or not to eat. Below is another caption.]
My food rule:
Red meat ✓ Pork ✓ Poultry ✓ Fish ✓ Shrimp X Oysters X Squid X Fruit ✓ Vegetables ✓ Grains ✓
I won't eat something if I have to Google to figure out whether or not it has a face.
