History Main / NondescriptNastyNutritious

* An event in ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth'' has an industrial adhesive be proved to be perfectly edible once dried, but it "tastes like cardboard." The player can either have it double for foodstuff, or remind the eager scientist telling them about it that nobody likes foods that double as glue.

* ''One Lonely Outpost'' starts the player character off with a handful of bars of Nutrient Paste, which have the description "100% daily essential nutrients, 0% fun. Science's perfect meal tastes like disappointment." The player character can craft more with green waste and fish sauce, but why would they want to? One message you receive from headquarters notes that Nutrient Paste tastes so bad that a lot of colonists will go on a hunger strike over having to eat it, and borderline begs the player character to start farming different types of crops to prevent this.

* ''VideoGame/StardewValley'': The Field Snack is a food item resembling an energy bar, made using a maple seed, pine cone, and acorn that provides a decent amount of energy in the early game. While it's never said to taste bad, none of the villagers are happy to receive it as a gift, implying it doesn't taste very ''good'', either. The sole exception is Alex, who, being the sports jock type that he is, actually likes it.

* ''VideoGame/StardewValley'': The Field Snack is a food item resembling an energy bar, made using a maple seed, pine cone, and acorn that provides a decent amount of energy in the early game. While it's never said to taste bad, none of the villagers are happy to receive it as a gift, implying it doesn't taste very ''good'', either.

* ''Videogame/{{Rimworld}}:'' Nutrient Paste is available to settlements advanced enough to build their dispensers. They blend together any sort of ingredient into bland, oozy and sterile paste that colonists aren't especially happy to eat. However, if you don't have a proper kitchen set up it's often better to set one up, as pawns find eating raw ingredients even worse, and both these and meals cooked in filthy kitchens and/or by unskilled cooks may cause food poisoning, which is even worse for moods all around and kills productivity because the afflicted are in too much pain to even walk properly. And even if/once you have a skilled cook with decent equipment, nutrient paste remains useful by virtue of being by far the most efficient way to feed prisoners. They don't like it any more than colonists do, but then again, [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential few players care about their prisoners' happiness, or lack thereof]].

* ''VideoGame/JudgmentRites'': "Though This Be Madness": This is what the food prepared by the Phays supercomputer is described to be; heavily processed. It's also fortified with tranquilizers as well, made to calm and pacify the developmentally-challenged individuals on the ship. One of your goals is to subvert this, and instead repair a botany incubator to grow fresh fruit for them.

** ''VideoGame/HalfLife2:'' After the Earth is [[VichyEarth taken over by the Combine]], the citizens receive rations dispensed from automatic machines, as seen at the train station in the game's introduction. While we never see any of them consumed, these rations are apparently of ''very'' poor quality, with one citizen (who, mind you, was ''actively waiting in line for the rations'') having this to say about them:
-->'''Citizen:''' "You gotta be damn hungry to wait in line for this crap."

** ''VideoGame/HalfLifeAlyx'' provides the page image; the player may occasionally find the pictured sustenance bars and an additional egg-flavored "gelatinated calorie paste" in the world while rummaging around, indicative of Earth's current status as a ball of resources to be used up by the ruling Combine. Note the label that recommends consuming them within [[IndestructibleEdible 9,000 days after opening]].

In addition to nutritive qualities, most foods have a taste, texture, appearance, and distinct shape. Beverages have colors, smells, temperatures, and qualities that are eye-and-palate-pleasing. We humans like to prepare our food in ways that please the senses, and entice us to consume it. Even nature has done this. Fruit has its bright colours and sugary or savoury tastes, vegetables have appealing textures and crunchiness, peppers and spices provide a mixture of fine grittiness and mix of pain and pleasure, and milk has its clean tone and rich aftertaste, just to name a few.

However, maybe something has gone wrong and caused us to eschew those ideals. The food might be prepared by a sapient machine that only knows the basic dietary requirements of a species or individual, the culture may be [[AdvancedCivilizationHollowImagination sterile]] in [[IndubitablyUninterestingIndividual many ways]], people interred at a correctional facility are being treated as objects and not individuals, or some ecological or economical catastrophe has forced us all to turn to PovertyFood.

Enter the "Nondescript, Nasty, Nutritious" substance, something that can barely be called "food". It has carbohydrates, proteins, fats, amino acids, other organic compounds, vitamins, minerals, binders, fillers, and any other substance that is "part of a balanced diet", and can ''technically'' fill you up and sustain your life. However, as the title suggests, all of the personality, taste, and appeal has been sucked out of it, leaving behind a... "something"... that could very well work either as a meal for you, a brick for your house, or oil for your car.

* The ''Clockwork City'' expansion in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsOnline'' shows us that [[PhysicalGod Sotha Sil]] has arranged his eponymous domain such that every citizen gets a supply of "Nutriment Paste", described as "A thick yet rheumy substance produced within the Clockwork City. Though quite filling, and rather healthy, it is food devoid of pleasure." One sidequest involves a farm on the edges of zone that produces a small amount of extremely valuable actual fruits and vegetables, while a full chain of sidequests in the poorest quarter of the city itself has you help source methods of making the naturally growing "Ironstalk Mushrooms" and meat from the local [[MechanicalLifeforms wildlife "Fabricants"]] into something edible, and tastier than the paste.

* Defying this trope with rations is now a big part of military strategy -- modern military forces are very cognizant that troop morale is important for combat effectiveness, and crappy food is guaranteed to hurt morale, so they strive to make even combat rations as tasty and palatable as possible within the limitations they have to meet. It's not for nothing that the phrase "An army marches on its stomach" has been a military maxim since the Napoleonic era.
** The D Ration chocolate bar, created by the US Army to replace whole meals in emergencies, ''was'' initially an invocation of the trope: The colonel in charge of the project was concerned that soldiers might just eat the chocolate whenever they wanted a treat, and thus explicitly demanded a taste "slightly better than a boiled potato". He got what he wanted. The bar was also so hard that many soldiers had to shave off bits with their knives rather than bite it, and caused such severe digestive issues that it was nicknamed "Hitler's secret weapon". All of this combined resulted in [[GoneHorriblyRight troops often choosing to starve rather than eat their D Rations]]. Later iterations improved all these issues.
* "Nutraloaf" is prepared by blending various different nutritive foods, putting them together into a vague loaf shape and baking the result until you have a large, orange loaf that's eaten without utensils and reportedly tastes like absolutely ''nothing'', somehow hiding its every ingredient from the tongue. It's only served in certain prisons in the US and Canada to misbehaving inmates, with results going from "misbehavior stopped" to "hunger strike". Although apparently because of its taste (or, more precisely, lack thereof), its use as a punishment is controversial, and there's been multiple lawsuits calling for its ban arguing that it's so bad it's considered a ''human rights violation''. Its proponents largely respond by pointing out that it's mostly served to those who can't be trusted with even a plastic spoon to eat with.

* Soylent (not that [[Film/SoylentGreen Soylent]], but it was named after the movie as a ShoutOut) was introduced as a meal replacement shake that meets 100% of human nutritional needs. Its main claim to fame was its "aggressively neutral" non-flavor. It gained a cult following among techies too busy to eat a proper meal. These days, Soylent comes in many flavors -- Chocolate, Banana, etc. -- including the aggressively neutral original.

* Gruel, in its most basic form, is a thin soup consisting of oatmeal, legumes, and lots of water, and will sustain someone with either a stomach upset or who is too poor to afford bread without offering the slightest bit of culinary satisfaction. Fancier versions, however, can contain spices, milk, sweeteners like sugar or honey, and even brandy or sweet wines, and be both nourishing and flavorful.

[[caption-width-right:350: Now including fiber! [[note]]Is it also a bad time to ask if this is boneless water?[[/note]]]]

In addition to nutritive qualities, certain foods have taste, texture, appearances, and distinct shapes. Beverages have colors, smells, temperatures, and qualities that are eye-and-palate-pleasing. We humans like to prepare our food in ways that please the senses, and entice us to consume it. Even nature has done this. Bright colors, savory, sugary tastes, and smooth-skinned textures for fruit, additional texture, crispness, and natural complexities in vegetables, painful pleasure and fine grittiness from peppers and spices and light, mild, delicate tones for milk, just to name a few.

However, maybe something has gone wrong and caused us to eschew those ideals. It might be prepared by a sapient machine that only knows the basic dietary requirements of a species or individual, the culture may be [[AdvancedCivilizationHollowImagination sterile]] in [[IndubitablyUninterestingIndividual many ways]], people being interred at a correctional facility are being treated as objects and not individuals, or if it happens mostly on Earth, Humanity has lost its natural way.

Enter the "Nondescript, Nasty, Nutritious" substance, something that can barely be called "food". It has carbohydrates, proteins, fats, amino acids, other organic compounds, vitamins, minerals, binders, fillers, and any other substance that is "healthy", and can ''technically'' fill you up and sustain your life. However, as the title suggests, all of the personality, taste, and appeal has been sucked out of it, leaving behind a... "something"... that could very well work either as a brick in a wall, mortar for that brick, or work as lubricant or oil in an engine.

Other times, this "food" is made out of mixed creatures and/or other things that, in normal circumstances, are not consumable ''as'' food, but have been heavily processed and somehow given the ability to supply nutrition to its consumer.

* In one ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' strip in ''Magazine/{{Dragon}}'', the Order meet a man who insists that the secret to a content life is to ignore FlavorText. He subsists entirely on a gruel that Roy says tastes revolting, but which he claims doesn't ''really'' taste of anything, because there's nothing about that in the rules.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'': One episode has Timmy wish everyone was exactly the same so that no one would get picked on for being different. This results in everything on earth becoming gray and nondescript, from the people to the food. Timmy's mom is such a terrible cook, she can't even manage to make gray blobby mush for dinner and winds up with a pink misshapen mess.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'': [[ChildProdigy Lisa Loud]] is known to invent food like this:
** In "[[Recap/TheLoudHouseS2E20YesManFriendOrFaux Friend or Faux?]]", she invents "kelp leather", which looks like a slimy green blob and is apparently chewy. Lisa outright describes it has "full of nutrients", but having "zero taste".

* Defying this trope with rations is now a big part of military strategy -- modern military forces are very cognizant that troop morale is a big part of combat effectiveness and are mindful that crappy food is guaranteed to hurt morale, so they strive to make even combat rations as tasty and palatable as possible within the limitations they have to meet. It's not for nothing that the phrase "An army marches on its stomach" has been a military maxim since the Napoleonic era.
** The D Ration bar (a chocolate bar meant to replace whole meals in emergencies) ''was'' initially an invocation of the trope: The colonel requesting it didn't want soldiers snacking on them out of rough situations, and thus explicitly demanded a taste "slightly better than a boiled potato". This, combined with their sheer hardness (many soldiers simply couldn't bite or crack them and had to shave off bits with their knives and eat those) [[GoneHorriblyRight meant the troops would rather starve than try to eat the bars]]. Later iterations solved this problem, at least.

* ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' features the [[FutureFoodIsArtificial vat-grown foodstuff]] "soylens viridiens", which is nutritionally complete if completely unenjoyable. The title character loathes the stuff, but Techpriest {{Cyborg}}s [[PlainPalate appreciate its convenience]]. Note that this is a direct reference to Soylent Green, which is famously made of people.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'': Lower clearance citizens have a wide variety of algae based and synthesized food products to choose from, and the happiness drugs prescribed to all citizen will help them forget the lack of flavour. The game often states that most lower clearance food, for all its nutritional value, is rather devoid of significant flavour. Part of the introduction to Red clearance is a gift of a hydroponic apple, and the text describes it as mindblowing in how it tastes.

* By technical definition, "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-processed_food ultra-processed food]]" is this. Despite being somewhat palatable, these types of food are made with sugars, fats, starches, oils, and fibers modified with harsh chemical processes (such as introducing hydrogen to oils, or artificial dyes to certain mixes) that introduce health problems in its consumer. The reason all of this is done is to be made convenience food; easy to make, eat, and digest.

* ''Fanfic/PropertyOf'': The food generally given to the humans is described as this, often consisting of a dark-brown loaf meant to provide carbs, a protein loaf that allegedly tastes like overcooked eggs and broccoli, and red-orange spheres that are meant to supplement fruits and vegetables. They aren't intolerable and none of the humans get sick from them, but many of them yearn for actual food.

* Similarly, plain yogurt, while extremely good for you, has a flavor that could also be described as "aggressively neutral" and mildly sour. Ditto for cottage cheese, that bland and lumpy diet standby of the '60s and '70s, and tofu, that much-maligned vegetarian/health food staple, which tastes just faintly of soybeans and water, at least if eaten by itself.

* There are ration cubes in ''[[Literature/TheShipWho The Ship Who Searched]]'' which are noted to be entirely palatable and unobjectionable consumed now and then, but a diet of nothing ''but'' ration cubes is frustrating and infuriating.

See also PlainPalate and OnlyOneWhoLikesSpam for people who prefer this kind of food, and MessOnAPlate for food that's visually unappealing regardless of its nutritional content. If the diner is lucky, it TastesBetterThanItLooks.