There are small joys in life we rarely stop to think about.
I’ve been thinking about food lately. Not in a deep, philosophical way, but in that quiet moment when you’re standing in front of the fridge at midnight, deciding between leftover pizza or a bowl of cereal. That freedom to choose, to crave something specific and then satisfy it, is something most of us never stop to appreciate. We cycle through flavours without thinking: sweet, savoury, spicy, comforting. We have bad days and treat ourselves to chocolate. We celebrate with cake. We nurse hangovers with greasy chips and crème-soda.
Ken Kaneki lost all of that.
[Post read time: 6–10 min]
When I think about his transformation into a ghoul, I don’t just think about the horror of needing to consume human flesh. I think about the smaller, quieter loss that nobody really talks about. He can’t enjoy food anymore. Not in any meaningful way. And that, to me, feels like a tragedy we gloss over too quickly.
The moment everything turned tasteless
I just rewatched episode one of Tokyo Ghoul, and there’s that scene where Kaneki tries to eat after his surgery. He takes a bite, and immediately his body rejects it. He gags, spits it out. He doesn’t eat much at the hospital, gets discharged, then while at home he listens to an interview on the tele and comes to his own conclusion.
You can see the confusion and terror on his face. Desperate to prove himself wrong, he tries to eat every edible thing in his home. He starts with a hamburger, he takes a bite, and immediately his body rejects it. He gags, vomits it out and tries again and again with everything that is possibly consumable.
The show focuses on his realisation that something is fundamentally wrong with him. But what struck me this time wasn’t just his fear. It was the loss.
That hamburger wasn’t just food. It was normal. It was the last thread connecting him to his human life, and his body violently rejected it. He can’t eat it. He can’t eat anything he once loved. And while the anime spends time on his psychological struggle with becoming a ghoul, with the moral weight of needing to eat human flesh, it doesn’t really let him grieve this particular loss. There’s no moment where he sits and thinks, ‘I’ll never taste my favourite meal again.’ But I felt it for him.
I kept thinking: what about everything else? The ramen he used to grab after class. The convenience store snacks. The birthday cakes, the coffee shop pastries, the late-night curry. All of it, gone. Not because he chose to give it up, but because his body won’t allow it anymore.
From feasts to survival
Food isn’t just fuel. It’s comfort. It’s culture. It’s how we connect with each other and with ourselves. A warm bowl of soup when you’re sick. A braai with mates on a Saturday. Your mum’s cooking when you visit home. Food is woven into the fabric of our lives in ways we barely notice until it’s gone.
For ghouls, food is survival. It’s singular, grim, and for most, devoid of joy. There’s no variety, no choice, no pleasure in it. It’s a necessity stripped of everything that makes eating human. And Kaneki, who lived as a human for most of his life, knows exactly what he’s missing. He remembers the taste of things. He remembers what it felt like to look forward to a meal.
Does he still crave them? Does the memory of a hot bowl of udon haunt him on cold nights? Can he recall the sweetness of a strawberry cake, or the richness of a beef stew, and feel the ache of never experiencing it again?
Coffee is his one small comfort, the only human thing his body tolerates. But even that feels limited. It’s not a choice born out of preference. It’s a lifeline. A single thread keeping him tethered to the person he used to be. And compared to the spectrum of flavours he once had access to, it feels desperately small.
In Tokyo Ghoul:re, we see something that makes this loss even more poignant. Kaneki cooks. He prepares meals for others, normal human food, and he does it with care. He can’t eat any of it, but he remembers how. He knows what flavours work together, what spices to use, how to make something taste good. He creates these dishes and watches others enjoy them, knowing he’ll never experience that satisfaction again. It’s a different kind of cruelty.
He hasn’t forgotten how to appreciate food. He just can’t participate in it anymore. Cooking becomes an act of memory, of connecting with something he’s lost, whilst being constantly reminded that it’s gone.
A quiet kind of grief
What gets me is that Kaneki never really mourns this loss. The story doesn’t give him space to. He’s too busy grappling with his identity, with the violence, with survival. But I can’t stop thinking about it. About what it would feel like to wake up one day and know you’ll never taste your favourite food again. That you’ll never walk into a restaurant and choose something off a menu. That every meal from now on will be the same grim routine, stripped of comfort and joy.
There’s something deeply sad about that. It’s not dramatic. It’s not the kind of loss that gets a big emotional scene. But it’s real. And it’s human.
I think about the smell of freshly baked bread, or the way chocolate melts on your tongue, or the warmth of a hot chocolate on a rainy afternoon. Kaneki lost all of that. He lost the ability to indulge, to savour, to experience the small pleasures that make life feel liveable. And nobody in the story acknowledges it, because there are bigger horrors to focus on.
But to me, this quiet loss adds another layer to his tragedy. It’s not just about what he became. It’s about everything he stopped being able to experience.
Losing more than humanity
Ken Kaneki’s transformation into a ghoul is framed as a loss of humanity, and it is. But it’s also a loss of choice. Of normalcy. Of the small, everyday joys that we take for granted until they’re ripped away.
He can’t browse a menu and decide what sounds good. He can’t treat himself after a bad day. He can’t share a meal with friends and bond over the flavours. His world became narrower in a way that’s easy to overlook but impossible to ignore once you notice it.
So yes, I feel bad for Ken Kaneki. Not just because of the horror he endures, but because he lost something we all cherish without even realising it. He lost variety. He lost a form of comfort. He lost the freedom to enjoy food.
And that, in its own quiet way, is heart breaking.
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