Lost My Appetite

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

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.

Examples of Lost My Appetite include:


Anime and Manga

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.
Muffy: Oh, my big, strong pheromone factory.
[They Eskimo kiss]
Z: Oh, brother. Suddenly, I just lost my appetite.

  • 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.
Jenna: I don't know, Steele. Suddenly I've lost my appetite.
Steele: Well, maybe your taste runs more toward [short pause] wolf.

  • 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.
Tiffany Aching: Yes, but that wasn't you eating them, was it?
Granny Weatherwax: No. But if you thought you'd been eating voles all night, you'd be amazed how much you don't want to eat the next morning. Or ever again.

Live Action TV

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]
Lindsay Funke: Let's just go, I've suddenly lost my appetite.
Lucille Bluth: Oh, who's gonna believe that?

  • 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.

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

[Maggie's open mouth reveals a baby tooth that looks like a sharp fang]
Homer: I just lost my appetite.
Lisa: Me, too.
Homer: [grabs Lisa's bowl] Wait, mine came back.

  • 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.
Fat Tony: No, what I said was: "He sleeps with the fishes". You see...
Louie: Uh, Tony, please, no. I just ate a whole plate of dingamagoo...

Buster J. Bunny: Hey-a, Loon girl... any guess as what today's mystery meal is?
Shirley: Oooh, like this requires telekinetic communication, Buster. I'll have to, like, meld with the meal. Ok, it's coming. I am... I am... poultry.
Plucky: Let's do lunch.
Shirley: Ewwww, I just lost my appetite.

  • 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?
Hayley: (Raises eyebrow)
Stan: And now I'm not hungry.

  • 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.