Lost My Appetite
A Stock Phrase used by characters who are just about to eat until they hear or see something in particular. Usually the thing heard or seen is something requiring Brain Bleach or Too Much Information. Can happen in cases of Alien Lunch, Foreign Queasine, Put Off Their Food, and I Ate What?.
Contrast Inappropriate Hunger.
Anime and Manga
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, this is Yuya's reaction to Reed Pepper's Cookpal monsters. (Dub only; in the original, he comments that they look kind of tasty, which is sort of disturbing.)
Film
Max: [After seeing a dead body] Well, I've lost my appetite. [Throws food away] For about a year. |
Chip: You have such a big heart. That's why you're my little cuddly-widdles. |
- Balto: Steele (a Siberian Husky) and Balto (a wolf-dog hybrid) are competing for the affections of Jenna (also a Siberian Husky).
Steele: Let's celebrate. I know where all the bones are buried. |
- The Princess and the Cobbler
Phido the Vulture: Is this when we eat? I need to eat, I don't see any food; I'm still hungry here. [sees One-Eye] I think I just lost my appetite. |
Literature
- Granny Weatherwax in A Hatful of Sky spends the night sharing minds with an owl. The next morning, she declines the thought of breakfast.
Granny Weatherwax: I don't want to eat anything. The owl I was in was eating voles all night. |
Live Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Wish":
The Master: [holds up a young girl] Hungry? I've lost my appetite for this one. She keeps looking at me. I'm trying to eat and she looks at me! |
[after being denied entrance to a high-end restaurant] |
- On Misfits, Nikki does this when Nathan casually shows her the bucket he has on stand-by for bathroom emergencies.
- M*A*S*H: as BJ relays to Hawkeye instructions on birthing a calf via the PA system ("you may have to stick your arm in all the way to the shoulder") we see a shot of the mess tent where everybody pushes their trays away.
Newspaper Comics
- Garfield
- In one strip, Garfield is eating and Jon starts talking about the time he laughed so much, soda came out of his nose. "It felt like it was fizzing inside my brain!"
Garfield: You've just made history. I've lost my appetite. |
- Jon makes history again in this one, where the store had a sale on ugly fish.
- Of course, no one can make someone lose their appetite like Irma can.
- Also, happens to Liz in this strip. Note that she's a vet, so the fact that Garfield could make her sick to her stomach is saying something.
- Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin's mom offers him a jelly doughnut out of a paper sack. Calvin refuses because the jelly always comes out the far side whenever he bites into them, like a giant bug with its guts falling out. Mom glances aside as she pushes the bag away: "And my friends wonder how I stay so thin..."
- In a Peanuts comic, Snoopy has this reaction when Charlie Brown brings him a combination of french fries, french bread, french salad dressing, and french vanilla ice cream.
Web Original
- From SCP Foundation, a tragic example, SCP-187 (aka “Double Vision”) This girl can see the future, in a very unique manner. When she looks at something, she sees two images of it, what it is now, and what it will become years later. This made it hard for her to eat, because when she looks at food, she sees it spoiled, rotten, or worse, already digested. Initially, the Foundation had to feed her using an IV just to keep her from starving; later they thought up a much simpler solution - feed her while she is blindfolded.
Video Games
- Persona 3: Akihiko says this after hearing about Strega's growing influence involving The Fall.
- In Persona 4, the Main Character can tell Yosuke this just before sampling Chie's and Yukiko's curry.
- In Mass Effect 2, Grunt enthusiastically tells Shepard about one of the images he saw in his tank—one of a mutilated turian. Shepard isn't quite so excited.
Shepard: I hope you have a good reason for ruining my lunch. |
Western Animation
- The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror IX":
[Maggie's open mouth reveals a baby tooth that looks like a sharp fang] |
- And in In "A Fish Called Selma", when Fat Tony's henchman Lou catches sight of Troy McClure:
Lou: Hey, I thought you said Troy McClure was dead. |
Buster J. Bunny: Hey-a, Loon girl... any guess as what today's mystery meal is? |
- In the Futurama episode "A Prisoner of Benda", Amy and Hermes claim to have lost their appetite forever after seeing Fry and Leela make out in Prof. Farnsworth's and Zoidberg's bodies.
- In American Dad episode "Bullocks for Stan":
Stan: This man rode me like an animal for three hours! Do you have any idea what that's like? |
- In Netflix Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Zach is someone Obsessed with Food, but he has an easy way to get his mind off of it. He simply has to recall the time he and Carmen met, which took place in a donut shop owned by V.I.L.E. Clearly, the donuts sold there were downright disgusting.