#but donnie has the largest 'hordes' of food and the highest amount of them (several around the house)

[bambiraptorx]

"Raph and Donnie definitely have some weird eating habits too. ...Especially when they feel the need to protect their food, come to think of it."

Could I ask what some of those habits might be?

The weird eating habits part is in reference to a few things that happen in the show itself, namely Raph eating wet salami and Donnie drinking flavorless juice, that I decided to expand on (at least with headcanons lol).

Raph, being the biggest and having the highest metabolism, is a lot less picky about what he eats out of necessity. He needs more food, more frequently, than anyone else in the family. This translates to eating a lot of things that aren't the safest to eat (expired, left out too long, found mysteriously on the floor, etc), partly because he has a really high tolerance for weird/gross food and partly because this boy has insane caloric needs.

However, there are a handful of food that he absolutely refuses to touch, mostly based on texture, like scrambled eggs. He had undercooked scrambled eggs once and hated the mouth feel so much he hasn't eaten them since. He's fairly prone to getting food grudges, which means that if he has a bad experience with a food once, he probably won't touch it again for months or years.

Donnie is basically at the other end of the spectrum, in that he's much pickier about how/when/where he eats his food. He feels much better about his food when he knows exactly what goes into it, partly because he's much more sensitive to differences in flavors, smells, and textures. He likes to have a lot of plain/bland/flavorless food on hand because it's usually easy to eat, which comes in handy if he's having a day when food is generally unappealing or if he's accidentally skipped a meal.

Sometimes Donnie's brothers tease him about his hordes of "boring snacks" that he keeps in strategic positions (aka places he spends a lot of time, like his lab or the arcade), but at the end of the day they know it makes eating much less stressful for him, so they don't mess with his stashes. It helps that he's the only one who actually enjoys his bland food in the family.

As for the protectiveness over food, that's partly because of their species both being naturally more aggressive (and carnivorous, for that matter), and partly because of growing up as one of four kids.