How much phenethylamine does the Symbiote need to stay healthy?
Let me set the scene for you: It’s 4 am on a Friday, late October. I’m sitting in my Homestuck pajamas (derse dreamer, for all the fans), drinking hot chocolate, and reading Venom: The Hunger. During the series, it is revealed that the reason Venom had a brain craving was because they need the neurotransmitter phenethylamine (often referred to as PEA or phenylethylamine), which is also commonly found in chocolate. So flipping through the pages, I had to wonder: exactly how much phenethylamine is needed for Mr. Symbiote to be happy and healthy?
Throughout my reading of Venom: The Hunger in class, the Symbiote goes around eating brains for the specific purpose of getting the phenethylamine they need. It’s a bit difficult to tell exactly how many brains are eaten, as the story follows Eddie Brock, the best and most popular host for the Venom Symbiote, instead of the Symbiote themself. The only way to figure out how many brains are eaten is to go off of Mr. Brock’s glimpses of where the Symbiote is, which may not capture the whole story.
If we do go off of Eddie Brock’s glimpses of his Symbiote, we see them eat 15 people (one was PEA deficient - I factored that in), and drained another of their phenethylamine. In total, the human consumption added up to 19.3632 ml of phenethylamine - basically nothing. However, in the third issue, Eddie brings the Symbiote what appears to be a 16 oz. container of pure PEA. This gives them a massive boost - in fact, the boost is so massive that they are completely sated. It takes 474.5392 grams before the Symbiote isn’t hungry anymore.
But what’s the best way to get the phenethylamine they need? At the end of Venom: The Hunger, Mr. Brock states that chocolate might be a good substitute for brains. In the final issue, Venom eats what appears to be a standard heart-shaped chocolate box. But proportionally, it looks larger than your standard Valentine's Day gift. If we remember that Venom is canonically 7’ 6” tall and Eddie Brock is 5’ 9”, every object that looks normal-sized in comparison to Venom is actually 30% larger than normal. The closest to the measurements of Venom’s box is an arrangement I found on Li-Lac Chocolates for $95. (How Eddie afforded this, I’m not sure. He’s literally living in the sewers.) This chocolate box has 63 pieces - 29 dark chocolate, 29 milk chocolate, 3 unknown pieces of wrapped, heart-shaped chocolate, and assumably 2 pieces covered by the aforementioned heart-shaped chocolates.
Chocolate normally has little phenethylamine - each cacao bean has 0.7% PEA, but you’re not eating pure cacao beans. Milk chocolate has about 10% cacao, while dark chocolate is about 70% cacao. Running all the numbers very quickly, that would mean that milk chocolate is .07% phenethylamine, and dark chocolate is .49% phenethylamine. That’s less than one percent - so you won’t get any significant amount of phenethylamine from chocolate.
If we remember the chocolate box has (assumably) 30 dark and 30 milk, and that each piece weighs roughly one ounce, then you would have 460 grams of phenethylamine - which is a lot. It’s almost enough to sate the Symbiote completely.
But is chocolate the best source outside of supplements? Sources say otherwise. Livestrong.com says that peanuts may be a good substitute. A human body normally has about 96 mg of phenethylamine, or roughly the same amount one and a half peanuts have. If you ever needed any evidence that the human body is super weak, there’s the proof in clear print: peanuts are superior.
So if you do the math, peanuts have 19100% more phenethylamine than milk chocolate, and 2700% more than dark chocolate. Not only would this be one of the best food sources, but peanuts are easy to buy, a lot cheaper than chocolate, and most importantly, it’s not suspicious. In order to get that 475 grams needed, though, you would need a staggering 13,732 peanuts - hopefully not all at once.
So what’s the ideal meal plan for somebody with a Symbiote? Well, we don’t have a set timeframe in the comics for how long Eddie Brock’s symbiote went without being fed properly, and I don’t personally know anyone who has a Symbiote, so it’s difficult to get an exact measure. However, if we go off the comics, we can guess.
Getting to the point that they did took time - time that isn’t easily measured due to the way comics work. However, it’s safe to assume that the Symbiote had not been completely cut off from all nutrients, and that the health decline happened over time. If they were to get their needed amount of phenethylamine, say, gradually every two weeks, then it’s safe to assume that the starvation-driven state we see in Venom: The Hunger never would have happened.
So every day, you would need 34 grams of phenethylamine, which equates to 1,717 pieces of milk chocolate, 354 humans, 246 pieces of dark chocolate, or one peanut.
Yes, you read that correctly. A singular peanut a day. I didn’t take the news very well - in fact, I’m still recovering from the sheer hilarity of the fact that Eddie Brock, investigative journalist, never thought about peanuts as a source of phenethylamine.