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 Foreign Queasine, Put Off Their Food, Nausea Fuel, or I Ate WHAT?!.

Compare Too Unhappy to Be Hungry. Contrast Inappropriate Hunger, and Autopsy Snack Time.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Seitokai Yakuindomo: A rare example of the cause not being disgusting, Mutsumi Mitsuba says this when Takatoshi Tsuda, who she has a crush on, appears.
• In the dub version of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Yuya loses his appetite at the sight of Reed's Cookpal monsters. (In the original version, he thinks they look delicious, which is kind of disturbing.

Films — Animated

• Antz
  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 Thief 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.

Films — Live-Action

• Strange Days
  Max: [After seeing a dead body] Well, I've lost my appetite. [Throws food away] For about a year.

Literature

• Chrysalis (RinoZ): Upon seeing the results of an empowered gravity well (ie lots of flattened monsters), Anthony is too disgusted to feel like eating the hapless victims. The chapter is even titled, "I May Never Eat Pancakes Again."
  For some reason… I'm just not hungry.
• Granny Weatherwax in A Hat Full 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.
• Comes up in Galaxy of Fear: The Hunger. Zak is offered some amazing-smelling stew, and wants to check on someone who was hurt helping him first. The poor guy looks awful, and when Zak comes back he's lost his appetite. But he notes that his body is still hungry - he hasn't eaten in a day - so he accepts a bowl anyway.
• In the Warrior Cats book Tallstar's Revenge, Tallpaw is having a meal with his denmate Barkpaw. Barkpaw starts talking enthusiastically about how he just learned how to treat infected wounds, and how he used it on an elder who had a nasty swollen tick bite. Tallpaw feels increasingly sick and no longer hungry at the descriptions and tries to change the subject.

Live Action TV

• Bar Rescue: More than a few kitchens have prepared food that the spies refused to eat, based purely on the sight or smell of it, or after being alerted to unsanitary kitchen conditions by Taffer. On a few other occasions, they weren't so lucky.
• 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!
• Arrested Development
  [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.
• Happens twice to Chandler on Friends, when someone says something disgusting ("they actually eat the placenta"/"I'm gonna miss that big old squishy butt"), causing him to respond, "And we're done with the yogurt"/"chicken fried rice" and putting the food down.
• Bones: Booth is eating a burger when he gets a call from Bones saying she's found that the victim was eaten. By a human. He throws away the rest of his burger.
• Averted in House when Thirteen tries to squick out Chase (who is eating a sandwich) with the contents of the Patient of the Week's recent meals, including testicles, cow brain, and - her personal favorite - "pig rectum, with a side order of sphincter". Chase just looks at her defiantly and takes another bite.
  Taub: I think they call that "breakfast" in Australia.
• In Fall of Eagles, Georges Clemenceau specifically warns Wickham Steed not to ruin his appetite with any rumors that might upset him. However, when King Edward VII and Alexander Isvolsky teasingly encourage the journalist to share some confidential information with them, Clemenceau decides to spice up the matter by betting that Steed can't tell the ambassadors anything they don't already know... only for Steed to oblige by revealing that the Emperor of Austria is planning to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina. Once Steed's left with his money, the French ambassador attempts to continue eating, only to put down his fork in disgust a moment later.
  Clemenceau: Damn your Wickham Steed. Spoiled my lunch after all.
  • Happens again at the very end of the same episode: at a breakfast meeting, King Edward VII discusses the aftereffects of the Bosnian crisis: among other things, Austria's attempts to gain independence from Germany have backfired, the Serbs have been denied compensation for the annexation, and Russia's efforts to open the Dardanelles via a secret bargain with Austria have ended in yet another humiliating failure - meaning that relationships between the two countries are more strained than ever, setting the stage for World War I. Realizing just how badly things have gone, the King wearily pushes his plate aside.

Newspaper Comics

• Garfield examples:
  • 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, Jon. I can't finish my meal.
  • Jon makes history again in this one.
  • 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.)
• In one Calvin and Hobbes strip, 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 one FoxTrot cartoon, Paige is in her biology class in the first three panels, doing experiments dissecting frogs and looking at fly maggots. In the last panel, she and Nichole are in the cafeteria, both looking sick, where she says, "I'm surprised no-one has ever tried to market the 'fifth period biology class diet'."

Video Games

• Chrono Trigger: One cutscene in the medieval castle has the captain of the guard and the head chef butting heads over the former's food not being ready. The captain eventually leaves, claiming he's lost his appetite for meat braised in cowardice. It turns out the two are brothers.
• 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.
• Cassie Cage says this after witnessing Mileena's Cruel and Unusual Death at the hands of D'Vorah in Mortal Kombat X.
  Cassie: Well, thanks for that. I know I'll never eat again...

Webcomics

• Trevor (2020) has a non-verbal example: The security guard loses his appetite for the noodles be brought to work when he overhears the medical team talking about the upcoming autopsy, and wordlessly tosses them to the side.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror IX":
  [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.
• Tiny Toon Adventures
  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 one Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode, the ever-hungry Shaggy says this after being spooked by a hermit.
• In the Teen Titans episode "Betrothed", Beast Boy loses his appetite after seeing how Starfire and her fellow Tameranians eat. (Basically, table manners are nonexistent on her planet, and the food doesn't look very appetizing.) Cyborg, however, is more open-minded.
• In the Superman: The Animated Series episode "Identity Crisis", Bizarro remembers he asked Lois out before he started to degenerate, so he kidnaps her, and breaks into a restaurant; unfortunately, his manners are atrocious. When he asks Lois if she wants anything, she replies, "Oh, no thanks, I had a big lunch... (Aside} Which I'm about to lose..."
• In The Wild Thornberrys episode "The Origin of Donnie", Darwin says this when Eliza has to pre-chew a piece of fruit for a baby orangutan to eat.

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