History Main / FoodChains

* Used as a central plot element in Walt Simonson's famed run on Creator/MarvelComics' ''Comicbook/TheMightyThor'', where the Dark Elves of Asgard were revealed to be one and the same as TheFairFolk and enslaved many humans by tricking them into eating faerie food.

* After George eats a faery cake in ''WesternAnimation/{{Faeries1999}}'' he has to stay in the faery world until he and his sister have performed three tasks.

* ''Film/{{Troll 2}}'': Anything served to visitors in the town of Nilbog will turn them into food for the Goblins that live there.

* ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'': One of the [[AllThereInTheManual DVD bonus features]] explain that monsters were an ancient tribe of hominids that were driven away from the mainland by the earliest humans and stumbled upon an enchanted island and started taking on strange shapes and sizes from the fruit and vegetables growing there. Upon realizing their newfound monstrous looks, they decided it was time to take revenge on humanity by scaring them.

** [[FridgeLogic But what about the air you breathe in past-time?]]

* An interesting sci-fi example in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' occurs when Jacob discovers the full story of what happenned to his [[DisappearedDad father]]: his ship crash-landed on a remote planet faraway from any sort of civilization, and, while the native plantlife was perfectly edible, it had nasty side-effects such as amnesia, reduced mental capacity, and vulnerability to suggestion. Rather than avoid the food completely and try to survive off their ship's own rations, however, the command staff, Jacob's father included, instead elect to keep the rations for ''themselves'' and make the lower crew members survive off the native food, more or less ''intentionally'' turning them into simple-minded slaves. Jacob is...[[BrokenPedestal less than pleased]] with his father when he finds out.

** In general, people in the supernatural world are very serious about reassuring guests that taking food or drink from them won't put them under an obligation.

* Subverted in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI''. Sabin and Cyan can eat a meal aboard the Phantom Train which ferries the dead to the other side; Cyan expresses great alarm due to this trope, yet Sabin seems unworried. It turns out to not only be harmless but a full party rest.

** In ''Discworld/TheWeeFreeMen'', if you eat when a drome has trapped you in a dreamworld, you'll never get out.[[spoiler: Unless you're one of the title characters. They can get out of anything... though taverns, they will admit, are occasionally a problem]].

* An interesting sci-fi example in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' occurs when Jacob discovers the full story of what happenned to his [[DissappearedDad father]]: his ship crash-landed on a remote planet faraway from any sort of civilization, and, while the native plantlife was perfectly edible, it had nasty side-effects such as amnesia, reduced mental capacity, and vulnerability to suggestion. Rather than avoid the food completely and try to survive off their ship's own rations, however, the command staff, Jacob's father included, instead elect to keep the rations for ''themselves'' and make the lower crew members survive off the native food, more or less ''intentionally'' turning them into simple-minded slaves. Jacob is...[[BrokenPedestal less than pleased]] with his father when he finds out.

** In ''Literature/ColdDays'', Harry's working for the Winter Court. Since he's spending that time officially within Queen Mab's hierarchy, he can gain and perform favors services without accruing a running debt, something that was hinted at throughout previous works. Another fae, [[CatsAreMean Cat Sith]], was appointed to be Harry's "butler", meaning he could request a perfectly mundane sandwich and can of Coca Cola without it counting.

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* The ForbiddenFruit from Literature/TheBible, which trapped Adam and Eve (and all their descendants) in sin.
* In ''Literature/TheSpiderwickChronicles'', Lucinda Spiderwick had made the mistake of eating Faerie Food, and is no longer able to eat human food. But that wasn't in the Faerie Realm. This is clearly the "tastes like dust" or "ImpossiblyDeliciousFood" variety, though - the mere sight of it is enough to make one of the other human characters go into a trance-like state and muse "[[SchmuckBait What's the harm in a single bite?]]"

* ''Literature/GoblinMarket'' by Christina Rossetti has the 'tastes like dust' variant.
* In ''Discworld/TheWeeFreeMen'', if you eat when a drome has trapped you in a dreamworld, you'll never get out.[[spoiler: Unless you're one of the title characters. They can get out of anything... though taverns, they will admit, are occasionally a problem]].
** Eating in Fairyland itself seems to be safe, though; [[spoiler: Wentworth and Roland are able to leave despite having both been stuffed with sweets by the Elf Queen]].

* Variation in Literature/WelkinWeasels: the weasels are trapped in Hunters' Hall, which they are told is the land of the dead, and that once they have eaten the food they can't leave. [[spoiler:It was an illusion created by an evil witch. The food is heavily drugged, which makes them too lethargic to attempt escape without being caught.]]
* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''
** In ''Literature/SummerKnight'', when Harry tells Billy to not eat or drink anything while they meet with some [[TheFairFolk Sidhe]], a fairy species. Accepting food or drink counts as accepting a favor, and it's an excellent way for them to get their claws into somebody. Apparently, however, you ''can'' use the ice cold water to bring your libido to its senses without it counting against you.

* In ''Literature/MidnightRiot'' by Ben Aaronovitch, the protagonist, Peter Grant, goes to interview Mother Thames and is told not to eat or drink anything while he's there or he'll fall under her power. She keeps trying to feed him, but seems to view it more as a game than anything, and is in no way insulted when he refuses.
** While it is played almost for laughs with Peter, Mama Thames has a servant who used to be a [[{{Muggles}} Bailiff]] that came around in the 1970s and accepted a cookie. The book is set in 2010.
** Mama Thames daughter Tyburn also tries to [[MindRape Mind Control]] Peter into drinking water from her fountain and binding him to her will.
* ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'': Any food or drink Alice takes in Wonderland makes her [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever grow]] or [[IncredibleShrinkingMan shrink]].
* ''Literature/{{Dragonback}}'' has the concept of the squatter poison; once it's fed to you you need to be given the antidote daily or die. ''Dragon and Slave'' does not say whether it has an expiration date.
** This may be inspired by ''Literature/{{Dune}}'', which had the Harkonnens poison Thufir Hawat with a poison that will kill him unless he takes an antidote (whose supply they control) every day for the rest of his life.
* ''Bone Chillers'', a series of horror fiction novels [[FollowTheLeader very similar]] to the more well-known ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'', had one issue "Back to School" involving a school cook who serves extremely delicious and addictive food. It's eventually revealed that the cook is a giant insect who puts larvae in her food for the school children to eat, incubating in the hosts' bodies until they're ready to burst out once they've served their purpose. The cook is only stopped by the efforts of the protagonist (who was infected with the larvae) and a fellow schoolmate who was allergic to anything besides specially prepared lunches.
* Fairy food in ''Literature/TheGirlWhoCircumnavigatedFairylandInAShipOfHerOwnMaking'' constitutes a binding magical contract that means the person who eats it has to return once a year.
* In "[[Literature/CallahansCrosstimeSaloon Mirror, Mirror, Off the Wall]]," ''we're'' TheFairFolk in the equation: when the reverse-timoline Robert Trebor visits our world, he can eat our food but not metabolize it. He has to keep a small stash of his own world's food on hand to keep from starving. He plans to market reverse-timoline food as a diet aid.
* In ''Literature/{{Paranormalcy}}'', Faerie food is like this. Jack is a changeling taken as a baby, and because of that, human food tastes bad to him.
* Holly Black's ''Literature/ModernFaerieTales'' frequently invokes this, not just because eating Fae food will bring you into their thrall, but because it's likely that the delicious-looking food is really just a glamorized rock or pile of old mushrooms.
* In Creator/AndreNorton's ''Literature/DreadCompanion'', the local food both acts as a BalefulPolymorph and gives a distaste for human food.
* In Delia Sherman's short story, "Grand Central Park," the Queen of Central Park offers the protagonist food. She refuses because [[GenreSavvy she reads fairytales]].

* In "Continuing Education", a short story in ''[[Literature/TheModernFaesGuideToSurvivingHumanity The Modern Fae's Guide to Surviving Humanity]]'', a tribe of TheFairFolk are recruiting dissatisfied humans (to learn about the modern world, and teach their ways) by posing as faculty at a college MBA program. Accepting food from one of them constitutes acceptance of their terms. One of the fae tries to trick the protagonist into eating, as it was done in the old days, while another reprimands her and explains the process openly. The protagonist accepts his food in an informed decision.
* ''Literature/JourneyToChaos'': When Eric travels from his mundane world of Threa to the magical world of Tariatla, he is amazed at both the flavor of the food and drink he finds and how it invigorates him. When he makes a return trip to his homeworld, the native food and drink is both tasteless and unsatisfying. This even applies to the ''air'' so he constantly feels like he's suffocating. This is his most viseral motivation for finding a way back to Tariatla.
* ''Literature/TheOdyssey'': When Odysseus and his crew encountered Circe, the men who ate Circe's food, which they were magically compelled to eat, were transformed into beasts, notably pigs. Odysseus himself only escaped this curse because Mercury, the messenger of the gods, provided him with an antidote beforehand, and still, despite his rage, had to act in a perfectly civil and polite manner, as befits SacredHospitality, and because Circe could not harm him directly, [[YearOutsideHourInside she made one night, where he was outright commanded to sleep with her, in exchange for changing his crew back into men, into seven years for the outside world.]] Odysseus understandably put a knife to her throat and left her island quite bitter and angry.
* In ''Literature/TheOnceAndFutureKing,'' young Wart and Kay go into Morgan le Fay's castle, which is ''made'' entirely of food, with specific instructions not to eat any of it for this reason. Fortunately, they don't.
* {{Discussed}} in ''Literature/{{Everworld}}:'' while escaping from [[Myth/NorseMythology Hel]]'s domain (which, yeah, is pretty much hell), [[PoliticallyIncorrectHero Christopher]] stops to drink some water coming from the cave wall. [[TokenEvilTeammate Senna]] casually says "Persephone," and Jalil immediately stops him, explaining the story. At that point, everyone but Senna is too afraid to drink anything, despite their thirst.
* ''Literature/DragonsInOurMidst'': In the third book, when Billy and Bonnie are traveling through the seven circles of Hell, they are warned that no food is safe to eat past a certain point. They encounter the Tree of Knowledge from the Bible, which always has one fruit hanging from it for each person around. Billy encounters a man at a table where ImpossiblyDeliciousFood is regularly brought and has no interest in leaving or doing anything but eat and wait for more food. In the next book, Bonnie says that when she died and went to heaven, she learned she was going to come back to life when an angel warned her not to eat from the Tree of Life, because mortal food would never taste good again if she did.
* ''The Fifth Sacred Thing'' has a non-magical example similar to the ''Literature/{{Dragonback}}'' example above: the Steward's [[SlaveMooks armies]] are reliant on a certain 'chip' mixed with medicine that'll kill them if they stop taking it, keeping them from desertion. It comes back to bite them when the City's scientists find a way to nullify its effects.

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* In ''Series/SleepyHollow'', Ichabod and Abbie enter purgatory and find themselves in a LotusEaterMachine where they never became Witnesses. If they eat the food offered they are trapped in purgatory forever, but by rejecting the food they break out of the dream.
* Subverted in ''Series/BeyondTheWalls'': The only way to keep your sanity and resist the House is to eat the bread you find in there.

* Izanami from [[Myth/JapaneseMythology Japanese creation mythology]] is forced to remain in the underworld (Yomi) after eating there when Izanagi tries to rescue her.
* The [[Literature/TheMetamorphoses legend of Persephone]] (Roman name: Proserpine) in [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Greco-Roman mythology]]: Persephone ate six pomegranate seeds while in the underworld, and is thus forced to stay there for six months out of every year. Her mother Demeter, goddess of the harvest, gets depressed when she's gone, [[JustSoStory and now we have seasons]]. (In the Mediterranean, the nasty season is the ''summer'', when everything is too dry to grow food.) That's the story with any mythological World of the Dead. Or elves. Or with the Lotophagi.
** Variants of this history narrate that Ascalaphus, an inhabitant of the Underworld, saw her doing that and he tattled to Hades that. Persephone (or Demeter according to other versions) was obviously ''very'' angry and she [[BalefulPolymorph morphed]] him into an owl.
** An AlternateCharacterInterpretation suggests Persephone knew damn well what the pomegranate seeds would do, and ate them anyway to make a point to [[MyBelovedSmother Demeter]] (or become the undisputed queen of the Greek underworld).
* Myth/ChineseMythology features a literal example. Once there was a Goddess, Shui Mu Niang Niang (roughly meaning "Old Water Mother") who was constantly, and rightly antagonized by the Celestial Bureaucracy due to her hobby of causing devastating floods with her magic buckets. After the latest attempt to stop her by having a disguised god use his donkey to try and fail to drain one of her buckets dry, Shui Mu retaliated by overturning her other bucket and casually obliterating a city, Ssu-Chou, forming what is now the Lake Hung-tse. The Goddess of Mercy, Guan Yin, was then tasked to subdue the Water Mother. Guan Yin did this by disguising herself as a noodle vendor, and convinced Shui Mu to try some of her noodles. When Shui Mu was halfway finished, all of her noodles turned into iron chains, including the ones she had eaten. The chains then magically dragged the Water Mother down a well, fastening her to the very bottom. People visit the well where Shui Mu is still imprisoned, and it's often said that when the well water is very low, you can see the ends of her chains.

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* A variation/subversion in ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'': the demon food in the Dimension of Champagne does not tie you to the dimension (the demons do that with, y'know, ''chains'') but its calories can never be exercised off afterwards. Women in particular do not take this revelation very well...
* ''Webcomic/StandStillStaySilent'': The trope gets an implied passing mention when Reynir gets offered a hot drink in the spirit world by [[spoiler:a dead Christian priest]], and asks Onni if it's okay to drink it. Onni says it's okay and actually helps himself to some cake a little later.
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** An AlternateCharacterInterpretation suggests Persephone knew damn well what the pomegranate seeds would do, and ate them anyway to make a point to [[MyBelovedSmother Demeter]].

-->-- '''[[Myth/{{Merlin}} The Warlock Merlin]]''', "Literature/ChildeRowland"

* [[Perfectionist dictate After you eat the food, all human food tastes like dust or similar, and nothing else can and will ever be appetizing.]] In some cases, it may also have the nutritional value of dust, making regular meals not an option; with both versions, unless you have a steady supply of extranormal food, you're likely to waste away from starvation. [[ImpossiblyDeliciousFood Maybe it only tastes unappetizing by comparison.]]

* After you eat the food, all human food tastes like dust or similar, and nothing else can and will ever be appetizing. In some cases, it may also have the nutritional value of dust, making regular meals not an option; with both versions, unless you have a steady supply of extranormal food, you're likely to waste away from starvation. [[ImpossiblyDeliciousFood Maybe it only tastes unappetizing by comparison.]]

* ''Anime/SpiritedAway'' has both an example and an inversion: The trope is played straight when Chihiro's parents are turned into pigs by the food at the abandoned restaurant, but Chihiro herself has to eat some of the spirit realm's food or else she'll fade out of existence. The difference is that her parents ate food that did not belong to them and transformed into pigs. Chihiro, on the other hand, ate food that was offered to her.

* In ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' [[Recap/RickAndMortyS2E10TheWeddingSquanchers S2E10 The Wedding Squanchers]], while never clearly stated, the way that Rick bats the food out of Summer and Morty's hands on cob planet before fleeing in a panic suggests that either ingesting the food there or even spending too much time there might have biologically dire consequences.

* In Egypt there is a very common saying (''"Law sherebt min Nilha"'', " If you drank from [her] Nile") which implies that anyone who has drank water from the Nile is bound to love Egypt and return. It is also the name of a very famous song.

* In ''Useful Notes /Egypt,'' there is a very common saying (''"Law sherebt min Nilha"'', " If you drank from [her] Nile") which implies that anyone who has drank water from the Nile is bound to love Egypt and return. It is also the name of a very famous song.

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'': [[Characters/SCPFoundationSCPs1000AndBeyond SCP-1323]] [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1323 ("A County Fair")]] appears to be a carnival run by TheFairFolk and anyone who eats food there has a 17% chance of becoming a permanent employee.

* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': Kai Opaka journeys to a planet where she was killed, but microbes in the atmosphere bring her back to life and heal her. The catch is that, in order to continue living, she can never leave that planet.

* ''Film/{{Troll 2}}'': Anything served to visitors in the town of Nilbog will turn them into goblin food.

** Invoked when Harry tells Billy to not eat or drink anything while they meet with some Faeries. Apparently, however, you ''can'' use the ice cold water to bring your libido to its senses.
** In another book, Harry's inner monologue explains how it works: If you eat Fae food, it counts as the Fae doing you a favor, and you then owe that Fae one in return. Apparently, though, if a Fae offers you a perfectly mundane sandwich and can of Coca Cola, it doesn't count.