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{{trope}}
[[File:pillmeal.jpg|frame| [[Street Fighter (
{{quote|''"The thing I always liked about food pills in ''[[The Jetsons]]'' is that they always seemed to enjoy them so much. An apple pie food pill seemed to bring them as much contentment and happiness as an actual apple pie. You can get much the same effect with Jelly Bellys, true, but they really haven't moved past the dessert genre."''|[[Lore Sjoberg]]}}
Food is different in the future and on alien planets. It might be more exotic, but for some reason, it's mostly just more convenient. Whether it's the tastiest, most satisfying meal that you've ever had, or just the futuristic equivalent of combat rations, it will come in
Food Pills were ''de rigeur'' for the Kitchen Of The Future during the first few decades of science fiction, but today they're a [[Forgotten Trope]]
The change is no doubt due to the growth of the health-and-exercise industry and the subsequent general awareness that the human body needs considerably more than just a few milligrams of vitamins per day, and some of what it needs (for instance, protein and soluble fiber) has a certain minimum mass and can't be compressed into a tiny capsule.
It may also be related to the reason that we need a health-and-exercise industry. We in the modern era get pleasure from the act of eating, and know it. Even if food pills could remove the need to get nourishment the old-fashioned way, they cannot remove the desire to eat. Even if food pills could taste just like the real thing, we want more than just taste from our food. Even with incentive, no one is going to invent the "extra-crispy fried chicken" pill; crispiness and pills don't mix. This has evolved into [[Concentrated High-Calorie Goo]], where food being condensed and all-in-one is a ''bad'' thing.
Today's science fiction food tends to be... well, food. If there ''is'' concentrated
Contrast the related trope "[[Instant Mass, Just Add Water]]" Pills where pills or powders have water added to them to make glorious feasts. They both seem to come from futuristic depictions of food.
{{examples}}
== [[Advertising]] ==
* An [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCsLcWvIbdA early advert] for Smash instant mashed potato has a spaceman getting his lamb chops and peas in the form of food pills, but of course "there'll never be a substitute for Cadbury's Smash". Which is basically a substitute mashed potato anyway...
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* The food pellets from Tarraku in ''[[Vandread]]''. These apparently suck so bad, the men on the ''Nirvana'' find out that even the women's ''bad'' cooking is better.
* In ''[[Naruto]]'', the [[Ninja]] characters carry
** There are also Soldier Pills, used to make the characters stronger by providing a burst of Chakra, and Blood Pills that can replenish lost blood.
** Several characters also use them to fuel particularly high-energy consumption attacks that would otherwise leave the ninja dead from rapid malnutrition. For example, Chouji has a three-pill provision [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique|that he's only supposed to use in dire situations.]] After chomping on all three (including the last, red pill, whose side effects include ''death'') Chouji goes from his usually obese side to as skinny as Naruto.
* In ''[[
* Junko Mizuno's manga, ''[[Pure Trance]]'', is about Food Pills humans rely on for food [[After the
== [[Film]] ==
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** Now [[Truth in Television]]... kinda. "Dippin' Dots", anyone?
* The processed colored slabs of "food" from the film ''[[Silent Running]]''.
* The three-course meal chewing gum from ''[[Charlie and
* ''[[WALL-E]]'' has the food juice. "Cupcake-In-A-Cup, available now!"
* There are several references throughout the ''Riddick'' series in regards to stuff like "protein waffles" being served at various slams throughout the galaxy, among other things. While not strictly pills, in this sense, it implies that raw nutrients have been converted into something more digestable, which is effectively the same thing. BRB, putting some vitamin C pills into my waffle iron.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* One of the later ''[[Land of Oz
** A similar example occurs with [[
* Robert Heinlein's short novel ''[[Methuselah's Children]]'' involves, at one point, trees that produce food flavored like "mushrooms and charcoal-broiled steak", "mashed potatoes and brown gravy", or "fresh brown bread and sweet butter".
** Heinlein, writing in the early days of artificial flavorings, seems not to have realized that there's more to enjoyment of food than taste: the above-described flavors applied to fruitlike "growths the size of a man's hand", "creamy yellow, spongy but crisp", and the temperature of just-picked fruit (about room temperature), sounds less than appetizing.
* One of the wonders in Tom's shop in ''[[Deltora Quest]]'' is what are tiny wafers that expand into fully baked loaves of bread when adding water.
* In the French children's novel ''Surreelle 3000'' everyone is bald, lives under Mont Royal and eats food pills.
* Various mentions of combat rations and food pastes in [[Star Wars]] novels tend to involve jokes on them being nearly as deadly as actual weapons.
** That's an ubiquitous military joke, that invariably pops up whenever soldiers and field rations exist together, regardless of country and even millennium. Just remember all [[Fan Nickname
* [[Charlie and
* Though not literally pills, the Elven "waybread" lembas from ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' serves the same function, in that it doesn't go bad and a single bite can fill you up.
** ...a much superior version of human-made<ref>not dwarven; Thorin & Co were given supplies of it at Lake-Town</ref> ''cram'' from ''[[The Hobbit]]''; it never goes bad either but according to Bilbo is not only completely tasteless but requires almost infinite chewing to ingest.
*** ...which in turn was parodied by Terry Pratchett's "dwarf bread" in multiple ''[[Discworld]]'' novels. It keeps forever, and you'll never starve to death if you have a piece of dwarf bread in your pack, because you'll become willing to eat anything ''else'', or travel heroic distances while hungry, rather than attempt the dwarf bread. It's also useful as a melee weapon.
*** At least one culture of shrews in ''[[Redwall]]'' has a similar bread; it's so filling that a small amount will even sate the hares, an entire species of [[Big
** Also from ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', the refreshment Treebeard provides for Merry and Pippin in ''The Two Towers'' seems to be a liquid equivalent of
* In
* [[Andre Norton]]'s science fiction stories often mentioned "E-rations", which had all the nutrition required for human beings but very little taste.
* E.C. Tubb's "Dumarest" stories had a liquid high-energy food called "Basic," typically described as sickly sweet because of a large amount of glucose. It was often used when reviving a [[Human Popsicle]], to aid quicker recovery. Nobody drank Basic if they had the time and money for real food.
* Stephen Leacock's short story [http://www.online-literature.com/stephen-leacock/literary-lapses/10/ "The New Food"]: An entire Christmas dinner for 13 people, concentrated down into one small pill... that then gets eaten by the baby. {{spoiler|[[Instant Mass, Just Add Water]] is a plot point. A ''[[Pop Goes the Human|messy]]'' one.}}
== [[Live
* The spray can foods in ''[[Phil of the Future]]''.
* Parodied in a ''[[
** Of course, to get a full day's nutrients, the Observers must consume three or four bowls. Or maybe fifteen.
* In an early episode of ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the TARDIS features a vending machine device which produces food in candy-bar form that mimics the flavor and texture of real meals when eaten. It's never seen again. In ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S5
* Referenced in one episode of ''[[Stargate SG
** "I like the yellow ones."
** [[Word of God]] is that the prop "yellow one" was every bit as disgusting [[Enforced Method Acting|as Carter's reaction suggested it was]].
* The original ''[[Star Trek:
** Except in the episode ''The Trouble With Tribbles'', when the Tribbles infest this system, and arrive piled on Captain Kirk's tray; one of them has even jammed itself into his drinking glass.
** This machine is spoofed in ''[[The
*** In ''[[Power Rangers in Space]]'' The Astro Megaship has the Synthetron, a machine that apparently creates any food or drink the user is thinking about. The Deltabase in ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]'' has the same type of machine.
** A similar device shows up in ''[[Megas XLR]]'', which will create any food requested. Jamie tries to use it to create some women and money, but it doesn't work.
** In "By Any Other Name", enemy aliens who were new to human bodies asked why the crew just didn't use food pills like they did. The crew then goes out of their way to subvert them by showing them the pleasures of [[Through His Stomach|eating, drinking]], and other things. As to what they were eating and drinking? [[Palette-Swapped Alien Food|"It's... it's green!"]] (among other bright colors).
{{quote|
'''McCoy:''' If he keeps [[Orgasmically Delicious|reacting like that]], he's going to need a diet. }}
* Meal bars in ''[[
** Note that both of these are the sort of food eaten when being smuggled on a freighter, rather than being the bulk of the diet. Much grumbling is done over the expense of getting certain foodstuffs on deep space stations, though.
* ''[[Buck Rogers in
* There is a variant in ''[[Firefly]]'': rather than being in pill form, they are about the shape and size of bricks<ref>
** You do. The RPG states that it's not exactly the most delectable food item, tho. Protein paste is the more common low-budget space food.
* ''[[Lost in Space]]''. Episodes "The Hungry Sea" and "The Space Trader" had "protein pills", a complete nutritional emergency substitute for whole foods.
* ''[[Quark]]'' had a scene or two where the crew would eat a meal ... by putting a hose to each person's mouth, through which a "pill" about the size of a fist was pneumatically rammed down their throats.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* A storyline in ''[[Mandrake the Magician]]'' a couple of years ago involved [[Time Travel|a man from the future]] who has broken the laws of his era to travel back to the 21st century. His reason finally turns out to be that he's a gourmet, and there's no real ''food'' in his future, just bland concentrated stuff.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' has spell ''Create Food'', merged in AD&D into ''Create Food & Water'' - description only said the produced food is "nourishing" and quantify the volume. Early players often joked about making a cardboard-tasting, nutritious slop, although this wasn't specified.
** AD&D2 had description of ''Create Food & Water'' note that the created food is "nourishing if rather bland" and added the "Murlynd's Spoon" (that became Spoon of Substance in the d20 SRD) - magic item which ''did'' create a cardboard-tasting, nutritious slop.
** Either way, taste can be tweaked via illusions just like other senses, so there were [[Utility Magic|cantrips for that]] (in 3e non-combat cantrips were merged into Prestidigitation spell, and it explicitly covers "altering taste" as one of its [[Magic Tool|many]] functions), though it's typically accessible to wizards, while Create Food & Water is cast by priests.
** Adventure S3 ''Expedition to the Barrier Peaks'' had a crashed spaceship with concentrated rations such as protein stews, cero-porridges, nutrient drinks, surrogate steaks, vegetable substitutes and vita-bars.
** [[Deadlands]] had a similar spell called "Vittles", that expressly created nutritious cardboard-flavoured slop. This could however be augmented with another spell that made anything that was even remotely edible taste like a three-star eleven course meal.▼
** The shadow elves of the Mystara setting have their own variant of this trope: edible balls of compressed fungus that are lightweight, don't spoil easily, and can sustain life if just one is eaten per day. More realistic than pills, as they're large enough to contain a day's worth of calories.
** Adventure ''Masters of Eternal Night''. Illithids normally eat the brains of humanoid beings (such as humans). In this module they have pills which contain the condensed food value of a human brain, which will fulfill an illithid's brain-eating requirement for a month.
▲
* Food Tablets in ''[[GURPS]]: Ultra-Tech'' don't taste very good and stretch their longevity by suppressing the appetite rather than being especially filling.
* [[Traveller]] has various forms of this. However when not pressed for space real food is naturally preferred. P.69 of the volume ''Far Trader'' deals with this.
* ''[[
* ''Mutant Future''. Goo Tubes are filled with a nutrient-rich mush which comes in four flavors: green, red, yellow and white. No one in the post-apocalyptic world knows what the flavors were meant to duplicate. A Goo Tube is the size of a roll of quarters but can feed a man for an entire day.
* Mongoose Publishing's ''[[Starship Troopers]] The Roleplaying Game'' had MI Field Rations. They had all the calories, nutrients and minerals needed to sustain an athletic man or woman for a single day. However, they were almost flavorless, white, chalky bars and were usually a trooper’s last choice for food.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* The healing items in ''[[Beyond Good
** The K-Bups appear to be marketed as some variety of candy-style snack food, while Chip Cheezum and General Ironicus jokingly refer to the Starkos as wedges of pure cheese in their [[Let's Play]].
* ''Ranch Rush 2'' has the antagonist trying to sell his "Wonder Food Pills". The protagonist, Sara, along with all of her non-Victor customers, insist that fresh food is best. Eventually, {{spoiler|they team up to create jellybeans}}.
* ''[[
* [[Red Alert 3 Paradox]]'s Allies issue these to special forces and paratroopers as part of their retro-future theme... along with appetite suppressors.
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** The future episode "Holidays of Future Passed" parodies this, where Future Marge adds water to a pill... which turns into a recipe card for a cake. She then takes the ingredients out of the cupboard.
* ''[[The Jetsons]]''.
** In [[The Movie]], George has Rosie cut out part of a breakfast pill he doesn't want, and notes that [[Future Imperfect|the toast was burned]].
** In one Tums commercial, George gets heartburn from a chili dog pill with the works.
* The [[The Flintstones|Flintstones]] episode where Fred borrows from his boss and puts off paying him back parodies this, when the Flinstones family is taken into [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|the suspiciously Jetsons-like]] [[The Future|future]] to show Fred how much interest will accumulate on his debt if he doesn't pay it off. When they're taken to a diner that serves food pills, Fred has two food pills thinking they were puny, then afterwards says he ate too much.
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* [[Pinky and The Brain]] seem well fed on their food pellets (when they're not nibbling on Chumcicles). Then again, food in pellet form could be satisfying if you were a laboratory mouse.
* Somewhat subverted in the ''[[Scooby Doo]]'' episode "Nowhere to Hyde," when Dr. Jekyll was working on a vitamin that a person would only take once in their lifetime.
* In a [[Garfield and Friends]] episode, Garfield [[Rip Van Winkle|falls asleep and wakes up in]] [[The Future]] where all food is in pill form, much to his chagrin. When [[All Just a Dream|he wakes up]] and sits down for his lunch, Jon serves him a pill on a plate causing him to run away in a panic.
{{quote|
== [[Real Life]] ==
* Military rations are designed to be filling, easy to store, and long-lasting (Civil War-era hardtack, MREs, etc). Their taste, however, is less than palatable, but then again, beggars can't be choosers.
** This is often debatable with modern rations like MREs; while many have gotten terrible or average reviews at best, other civilian reviewers have enjoyed their meals and found them roughly on par with commercial canned or frozen meals in terms of taste. Of course, the Russians still feed their soldiers canned meat with half the can full of fat...
*** Because fat ''IS'' very nutritious and calorie-rich, and for a physically active man such as a soldier it isn't even nearly as harmful for health as for a modern sedentary urbanite,<ref>Chief health disadvantage of fats is that they tend to accumulate if not consumed by the body, and a modern urbanite of an average lifestyle spends at most about 2200 kcal per day, while consuming about 3200 kcal, leading to obesity and cardiovascular problems. A soldier in the field OTOH can burn off as much as 6800 kcal per day.</ref>
*** Referenced in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'': Snake loves the instant noodles and calorie mates that he's able to find, but he simply can't stomach the Russian rations that restore most of his stamina bar (in a game where the amount of stamina restored is related to both the taste and the calorie content of the meal).
*** Mainly because he missed on a crucial detail: traditional Russian canned meat is supposed to be eaten ''hot'', with fat melted and the crushed biscuits or cereals added to the pot, creating a kind of a porridge/gravy. Eating it cold out of a can like luncheon meat is an acquired taste indeed.
*** Also note that in [[The Sixties]] when the game is set [[Ramen
** The British Army went to quite a bit of trouble to avert this one a few years back{{when}}
** The relative quality of the MREs received a fair amount of public attention after Hurricane Katrina, when the military supplied many of them to people displaced by the storm and the subsequent flooding. That said, everybody agreed that even the worst MRE beats starving.
* Canned food originated for military purposes, as feeding an army is rather difficult. During the first years of the Napoleonic Wars, the notable French newspaper Le Monde, prompted by the government, offered a hefty cash award of 12,000 francs to any inventor who could devise a cheap and effective method of preserving large amounts of food. Glass jars were used at first but they break rather easily. So metal cans were developed.
{{quote|
** Unfortunately, early cans were sealed with lead, which probably ended up killing the soldiers faster than actual combat.
** Also, the tin opener was invented some years after the tin, so soldiers resorted to opening tins with bayonets and the like.
** The [[World War II]] version given to Allies was fairly protein-heavy for the circumstance, enough that when the American and British vanguard found concentration camps medics had to stop the generous but medically unqualified soldiers from passing out rations to former victims who would get sick. It didn't help that said victims were walking skeletons by the time.
* The astronauts of the Mercury program did in fact eat their food from squeeze tubes. By the Gemini program, the victuals had been upgraded to freeze-dried food pouches and gelatin-coated bite-sized cubes. Only by Skylab did proper knife-and-fork dining finally arrive in space, aided by the invention of extra-thick,
* Paul Bocuse, a famous French cook, said that his brother was against Paul's wish to become a gastronomer as he expected people to feed themselves with pills by the year 2000 and thus there wouldn't remain a place for cooking. Of course, this didn't come true, but remind that his and his brother's formative years were [[World War II|in the 1940s]] and that favoring technophile solutions over subsidizing peasants in order to fundamentally fight hunger will not have been a too uncommon mindset at such a time.
* Like the quote above stated, Jelly Belly jellybeans come in over fifty flavors, including buttered popcorn, mango, and cotton candy. Several of the special lines of flavors, especially the "Bean-Boozled" and [[Harry Potter|"Bertie Botts"]] lines, included other flavors from the bizarre to the [[Nausea Fuel|downright nasty]], including Birthday Cake, Dog Food, Vomit, Moldy Cheese, Skunk Spray and Spaghetti. Pretty much all of them are spot-on in taste at least (though how they figured out what Skunk Spray tasted like...)
** A lot of "taste" is actually smell in disguise. The tongue only tastes the eight basic flavors (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami, cooling, pungent, and stringent); all the nuance comes from your sense of smell contributing. So if they can get the smell right, it'll probably taste about right too.
*** More impressively, some of their beans have the flavours of fizzy beverages... and they actually fizz!
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20130816045509/http://www.lifecaps.net/faq.html LifeCaps], and there are probably competitors.
* Some candy bars, like [http://www.candywrappermuseum.com/bigeats.html Full Dinner] seemed to imply that they had the nutritional content of nutritious food, rather than just empty calories.
* A recent article in Wired Magazine pointed out the flaws of food pills. Since the average human body needs roughly 2000 calories a day to stay alive, one would need to eat a half-pound of small pills (or a single giant half-pound) pill every day. This is because the four sources of calories (fats, carbohydrates, proteins, and, yes, alcohol) are very hard to compress into a single small pill. That does not factor in the necessary vitamins you would also need to stay healthy. Finally the article's writer asked why would you want a food pill when a hamburger is so much tastier.
** Moreover, a crucial stimulus for
* Food pellets for pets. Especially considering what they naturally eat, it's a wonder they can even stand it.
** Note that food pellets manufactured for laboratory animals, like rats or rabbits, are often ''designed'' to be tasteless, so that alternative foods offered as a reward for completing experimental tasks will be more appealing.
** Pellets are also offered as an alternative to mixes, as it ensures the animal gets all the nutrition it needs instead of picking out only the bits it likes.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060205154114/http://davidszondy.com/future/futurepast.htm David Zondy's Tales of Future Past] has a [https://web.archive.org/web/20130519045914/http://davidszondy.com/future/Living/futurefood.htm huge segment] on [[Future Food Is Artificial|Future Food]], and of course [https://web.archive.org/web/20131105135415/http://davidszondy.com/future/Living/foodpills.htm Food Pills]. The best page is probably [https://web.archive.org/web/20130519220931/http://davidszondy.com/future/Living/synthetic_food.htm the one describing an attempt to put it into practice];
{{quote|
It was syrup. Looked like weak corn syrup. Tasted like weak corn syrup.
No wonder they had to be locked up for the duration of the experiment. One unguarded window and it was "Hello, cheeseburger!" }}
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Futuristic Tech Index]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Food Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Food Pills]]
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