What Do They Eat in Squid Game: The Challenge?

The Gist:

• The players in Squid Game: The Challenge get regular meals during their stay at the games.
• Some competitors don’t like the food.
• More substantial meals come in different forms.

With Season 2 of Squid Game just barely on the horizon, Squid Game: The Challenge is… also a Squid Game-related project. Based on the internationally successful Korean drama on Netflix, the reality show competition pits 456 real-life players in a similar gauntlet of elaborate children’s games where the last person standing gets to take home a grand prize of $4.56 million. The reality series misses the point of the show by a mile and a half, but you can tell that there’s some real effort here.

Squid Game: The Challenge recreates many of the iconic sets from the source material in painstaking detail. From the elaborate set-pieces to the games’ individual structures, The Challenge replicates many aspects of the original show.

As such, the players are also made to stay in the same dorm for the duration of the challenges. And though they are made to live under strict conditions, they all have to eat at some point. But what do the players eat exactly? Honestly, it varies.

While there’s no inherent risk of life and death in Squid Game: The Challenge, many aspects of the original show are retained in the reality series. That includes dorm life and drama in-between games. The players get a little downtime to interact with each other and take a breather before the next challenge arrives. And of course, they get to eat at a certain point.

In the first episode of The Challenge, players are offered food tins that contain fried rice and a fried egg on top, similar to the basic meals that the players got in the original show. It’s certainly not the most glamorous meal, with one player claiming that the food tastes like plastic. However, any meal is a good meal when you’re living in the Squid Game dorm. One player can even be seen taking food from people who didn’t want it, and they even hoarded a secret tin to save for later.

However, food comes in all different forms in The Challenge. The reality show features different events in between games that yield certain benefits or consequences. Some of those include far better meals than you might get regularly. One player received a full burger and fries from one challenge while another received a candy bar. In some cases, the entire dorm can get treated to some decent food.

However, those in-between meals almost always come with a catch, forcing players to remain on their toes and think twice before accepting any luxurious food rewards.

The players have plenty to eat in the dorms, but they do have to watch what they eat for very different reasons.

The first five episodes of Squid Game: The Challenge are streaming on Netflix.