History Main / FoodPills

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* A special type of instant noodles from the webcomic "The Junk Hyenas Diner" by the same lady who made ''Webcomic/SlightlyDamned'' come in pill form. Subverted in that not only are food pills extremely rare, the instant noodles were banned because [[spoiler: peoples' stomachs [[InstantMassJustAddWater violently exploded]]]] when they accidentally ingested the pill, [[spoiler: which is shown later when Guff kills the Dinoboar by throwing an unopened noodle packet in its mouth.]]

* 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 at least 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) provide a set number of calories per unit of mass, so it's just not possible to make food that weighs less yet has the same calorie content. That does not factor in the necessary vitamins, minerals and fiber 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.

** Starfleet has combat rations, seen in the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode ''[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS02E03TheSiege The Siege]]'', which, while [[DownplayedTrope slightly larger]] than actual pills, have a comparable nutritional density. According to Chief O'Brien, they are time-released to keep a person fed for a full three days.

* [[http://www.compactforlife.com/seven-oceans-food-rations/ Sea survival food rations]] for use in lifeboats and liferafts are designed to be eaten once daily while surviving at sea after abandoning ship. They tend to taste very dry, but will give you the nutrition you need to get through the day. This also applies to the similar [[http://www.gcrieber-compact.com/product-range/malnutrition/emergency/bp-5/ disaster relief rations]].

** 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}}s for [=MREs=]. Hint: ''Meal, Refusing to Excrete''[[note]]Early [=MREs=] were notorious for inducing constipation in their eaters — it turned out that they were originally designed to reduce the number of times the soldiers had to "unload", and thus intenionally were somewhat fiber-deficient. Unfortunately, it has GoneHorriblyRight, resulting in a lot of constipated soldiers and mountains of silent curses. They were later reformulated to contain more fiber and included a laxative chewing gum.[[/note]] is one of the mildest. ''Meals Rejected by Ethiopians'' was popular at the time news covered famine in Ethiopia.

* Inverted in Scott Westerfeld's Literature/{{Uglies}} series. Food is plentiful in the future, so there are calorie binging pills that you take so you can eat even more.

* All the human space navies in the Literature/TheLostFleet series use nutritional bars of various alleged flavors when they're away from base. The Alliance forces trapped far behind Syndicate lines end up raiding rear echelon bases for supplies and quickly discover that as bad as their rations are, Syndic ration bars manage to be worse. The Danaka Yoruk-bar is considered particularly inedible.

** In an early episode of the show, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E3TheEdgeOfDestruction "The Edge of Destruction,"]] 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 ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963'' episode "Counterweight", the participants in a simulated space voyage are fed nothing but unpalatable meat and vegetable concentrates, designed to save weight and storage space. The stewardess sprays the scent of real food from aerosol cans to try to compensate for the lack of flavor and texture.

* During the ColdWar, US Civil Defense planners not only were building fallout shelters, but were including packs of All-Purpose Survival Crackers in them. Despite the fancy name, these were plain corn and wheat flour biscuits, sealed in metal tins. Cheap, easy-to-make, long lasting, and apparently all the calories you'd need to survive at least two weeks after TheEnd.

* Briefly seen in the ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'' episode "Future Schlock" affter Rocko and Heffer return to Earth after spending seventeen years in space (and apparently not aging the entire time).
--->'''Heffer:''' I love the future.
--->(adds a drop of water to a pill that instantly turns into a huge hoagie)
--->'''Heffer:''' I love the future.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory'' has Dexter accidently being mixed up with the son of two strict scientists. At first Dexter loves living with them, until their cold, sterile approach to child rearing gets on his nerves. The line comes when they serve him vitamin pills and chewable juice for breakfast.

* 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 [[Literature/HarryPotter "Bertie Botts"]] lines, included other flavors from the bizarre to the [[NauseaFuel 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! This is due to inclusion of a fizzy caramel, set under the [=CO2=] high pressure.

*** 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,[[note]]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 kilocalories (AKA "capital-C" Calories) per day, while consuming about 3200 Calories, leading to obesity and cardiovascular problems. A soldier in the field, on the other hand, can burn off as much as 6800 Calories per day.[[/note]] while being cheap and non-spoiling in a can. Around the world much of the traditional peasant food, created by the people who did a lot of hard physical labor, is a hearty, greasy fare. The main reason obesity runs rampant in modern society is a consequence of technology removing a lot of the hard manual labor with people largely not changing their traditional high-fat diets to fit. See also: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemmican Pemmican.]]

* In ''Manga/{{Dragonball}}'', the Senzu ("Sage Bean") not only heals any and all physical injuries (not counting diseases or virii), but it keeps you full for 10 days. It even works for [[BigEater Goku]].

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's short story "C-Chute", At one point two characters eat space rations: "thoroughly synthetic, concentrated, nourishing and, somehow, unsatisfying."

** The Hershey company developed a chocolate-based, low volume high calorie ration to include with the survival kit for pilots who eject from their planes. It was intentionally designed to taste bad (the order to the food scientists tasked with designing the chocolate was that it must taste "slightly better than a boiled potato"), so no one would snack on it unless they needed to. Indeed, the food scientists may have done a bit too good of a job on the taste front, as the chocolates turned out to taste so bad that some WWII soldiers would rather risk starvation than eat it-- having a texture and firmness somewhere around "brick-like" didn't help, either; a soldier risked breaking his teeth on the stuff unless he shaved off tiny portions with a knife.

*** The idea was pioneered by the Germans in 1930s, when their army encouraged development of Scho-Ka-Kola, a highly caffeinated chocolate flavored with Kola nuts. It was heavily used by the German military during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and remains popular today, presumably with the military as well as civilians. And then they went the whole nine yards, spiking their ''Fliegerschokolade'' and ''Panzershokolade'' with the honest to God ''metamphetamine'', though there is some confusion whether these were the real spiked chocolates, or just the soldiers' nicknames for the pure meth pills. ''Civilian''-grade meth-chocolates did exist for real, though, but since 1941 they were prescription only.

* In ''Manga/{{Dragonball}}'', the "Holy Senju Bean" / [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Senzu Bean]], when consumed, eliminates hunger completely and sustains you for ten days, in addition to completely healing any and all injuries, except for viruses. It even works for [[BigEater Goku]].

* Parodied in a ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' skit where the Observers sent Mike their super-advanced Food Pills. Mike assumes that they're the traditional version - one pill gives you all the essentials for a whole day. The Observers say that no, you need to eat a whole bowlful, [[AdjacentToThisCompleteBreakfast with milk and juice and other stuff]].

* May in ''Anime/Pokémon'' crates a special Pokeblock that can satisfy her always-hungry Munchlax.

* Commercially-prepared orange juice is another product that is as close to this trope as you can get on grocery store shelves. The juice is pasteurized and has the oxygen removed. This also removes the flavor with it. The flavor in commercial orange juice comes from "flavor packs" that are specific to each manufacturer. They're made from orange oils and orange essences, so [[LoopholeAbuse they're exempt from ingredient labeling laws]] in the U.S. Most orange juice is concentrated and later reconstituted, either in the factory or in the kitchen. It had its origin as a more palatable source of vitamin C for soldiers in World War II instead of the bitter lemon crystals they were issued as rations in a more literal version of this trope, but it was only perfected after the war. Commercial orange juice is glorified sugar water that just happens to have a high concentration of vitamin C.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' episode "The Long Long Weekend," Fred borrows from his boss and puts off paying him back parodies this, when the Flinstones family is taken into [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything the suspiciously Jetsons-like]] [[TheFuture 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.

* ''Film/CubeZero''. The two technicians [[BigBrotherIsEmployingYou operating the Cube]] are sent down a silver dish-covered tray in the elevator. When they take off the lid, there's only their written orders and a couple of pills. Before they eat, one of them insists on saying Grace first (though that's also because they're in a theocratic dictatorship).

* In ''Film/CubeZero'', the technicians seem to be provided only with food pills containing specific meals.

* In ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', {{Ninja}} carry FoodPills, referred to by those exact words in the dub, as field survival rations. As with the TruthInTelevision examples, real food is preferred whenever possible.

* One of the later ''[[Literature/LandOfOz Oz]]'' books features FoodPills invented by Professor Wogglebug. Characters who take them are still hungry, even though he insists they have all the nutrients they need. Plus, there is the fact that people want to have the fun of regular meals--when the Professor tried to force his students to eat the pills all the time, they threw him into a lake.

* Parodied in a ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' skit where the Observers sent Mike their super-advanced FoodPills. Mike assumes that they're the traditional version - one pill gives you all the essentials for a whole day. The Observers say that no, you need to eat a whole bowlful, [[AdjacentToThisCompleteBreakfast with milk and juice and other stuff]].

* The healing items in ''VideoGame/BeyondGoodAndEvil'' are all "synthetic foodstuffs," from the slab-like Starkos to the more traditionally pill-shaped K-Bups (manufactured by the aptly-named Nutripills company). However, unlike most examples of FoodPills, real food definitely exists -- we just never see the characters eating it. For example, a ParodyCommercial for Starkos shows them being served with guacamole, and Pey'j at one point comments that an animal reminds him of his aunt's [[AlienLunch "Chocolate-covered squid tentacles with kiwi sauce."]]

* Commercial bulk livestock feeds are like FoodPills for cattle, in every respect except compactness.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Battlelords of the 23rd Century}}'' supplement ''Lock-N-Load: The Battlelord's War Manual''. Protein tablets provide 2 units of nourishment to anyone who eats them.

* In ''Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space'', modern science has reduced food to a simple pill containing all the essentials of life with no waste products (* see ''20,000 Leagues Without a Pee''). [[Film/TheAdventuresOfCaptainProton Captain Proton]] makes the mistake of eating two pills at once and gets the unique taste of jelly donuts mixed with steak & kidney pie. Then Buster Kincaid accidentally eats a red pill and [[RedPillBluePill sees how deep the rabbit hole goes]].

* ''Discworld/ThiefOfTime'': the Auditors of Reality in ''Literature/{{Discworld}}''. The Auditors who construct human bodies as disguises initially try to keep the bodies going by exchanging all necessary materials directly with the environment rather than messing around with inefficient biological systems. Unfortunately, using actual human bodies (even ones created from scratch) means that they come with all manner of inconvenient instincts and drives, and sort of expect to be relying on those inefficient biological systems; so a group of disguised Auditors trying to "breathe" by giving oxygen directly to the cells collapse on the ground, suffocating, as their bodies demand that they start ''literally'' breathing.