History Main / UnconventionalFoodUsage

* In feudal Japan, rice was used as a form of currency with the "Koku" (about 5 bushels' worth of rice) being a standard unit of measure of property value (for example, to qualify for daimyo status a domain had to have a value of at least 10,000 Koku).

* Mr. Potato Head toys were initially just a pile of parts that you were supposed to stick into a real potato. After people complained that it was wasting food, they started including a plastic potato body with the parts.

* Mr. Potato Head dolls initially used a real potato, but after people complained that the potatoes may spoil, they changed it to a plastic one.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'':
** In "Chuckie Gets Skunked", Chuckie bathes in borscht to get rid of the smell of a SmellySkunk who sprayed him.
** In "Hold the Pickles", upon hearing that Taffy doesn't like dill pickles, the babies think that this [[WhosOnFirst refers to the youngest of them, Dylan "Dil" Pickles]]. Upon hearing that she likes the older babies because they're "sweet", they put ice cream sundae decorations on Dil to make him "[[LiteralMinded sweet]]".
** In "Brothers are Monsters", Lil uses some sticks of candy to pretend she has fangs. This scares Phil because he's the younger twin and he'd just heard their uncle say that big sisters could be monsters.

* In ''Fanfic/TheNightmareHouse'', Lisa has a nightmare in which someone mentions that she used a pickle to make a lamp with.

** Gru is once seen wearing a hat made out of corn chip.

* The Ming Dynasty invented the use of sticky rice mixed with lime in mortar because the organic compounds of sticky rice were superior to inorganic concrete available at the time. In a tragic version of 'using food instead of eating it', enough rice was used making additions to {{the Great Wall}} of China that triggered a famine.

So when food is used for adhesive, lubricant, spacers to keep the chair from wiggling or shampoo, it's either PlayedForLaughs - especially if it obviously wouldn't work in real life- or used to show how desperate a situation is that the protagonists are using the food reserves for building material or medical supplies.

* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'': Pumpkins can be worn on the head to ward off Endermen.

* ''Series/FraggleRock'': In one episode, Red and Mokey use radishes as earplugs.

* In ''Film/TheRocketeer'', the rocket pack gets shot by gansters, causing a fuel leak; Peevy uses a wad of chewing gum to patch it back up. [[spoiler: When [[BigBad Sinclair]] takes the rocket pack at the end, [[TheHero Cliff]] peels back the gum, causing him to explode.]]

* The Land of Goodies, a world made of ''food'', shows up in more than one of Creator/EnidBlyton's books, notably in ''Literature/TheFarawayTree'' and ''Literature/TheWishingChair'', where the buildings and streets are made from candy and edibles. The latter book have the mischievious brownie character, Jinx, who got into trouble for stealing and eating someone's door-knocker (made of dark chocolate!) and later arrested for vandalizing, but managed to escape because his prison cell is made of food, too - namely the bars are candy-canes and the walls are cake, so he simply eats his way out.

** While shopping for groceries, Mac concocts homemade tear-gas out of some selected spices (cayenne pepper), vinegar, and baking soda. ("Blow Out")

** One of the ways the player sabotages the weapon in the "Super Weapon Showdown" mission is writing on the blueprint to fill the giant fist with jelly.

*** On the same episode, Louise wrote a story in which Mr. Frond sent a robot version of himself to kill her. She finds out the robot's weakness is cream corn and defeats it by pouring cream corn from the cafeteria on it.

** In "Meatman", Lazlo, Raj and Clam get a can of mysterious meat (uncooked, no less) that they find disgusting until they see how jiggly it is. Lazlo and Raj make different sculptures out of it (including the titular meatman), while Clam uses it as a bouncing ball.
** In "Hello Dolly", Edward makes a doll using a pickle, a marshmallow and some toothpicks so he wouldn't need to blow up his beloved Veronica doll.

* The use of chewing-gum as a temporary patch for leaks in fuel tanks and fluid lines is a well-known makeshift in aviation circles, especially in the pioneering days of the earlier twentieth century, where a pilot far from engineering support was expected to know enough about mechanics and maintenance to keep his own plane in the air.
** One famous instance of this happened during the Korean War, where a group of marines were stranded in freezing weather with tanks broken down from the freezing cold and were running low on ammunition. They called in for an air drop of "Tootsie Rolls" (codename for mortar shells), but ended up getting ''actual'' Tootsie Rolls instead. This mistake ended up saving their lives, as they were able to use them to seal the shattered pipes on their tanks. The soldiers who made it out alive were then nicknamed the Chosin Few.

* Baking Soda (mild base in powder form), Vinegar (weak liquid acid), rotgut vodka (alcohol) and vegetable oil can be put to use as cheap, nontoxic cleaning agents

* In ''Vegetable Soup'', a book based on ''Series/SesameStreet'', the supermarket sends Ernie and Bert's shipment of vegetables to Cookie Monster, and Cookie's shipment of cookies to Ernie and Bert by mistake. When Cookie recieves the vegetables, he does a number of strange things with them. He sharpens a carrot and tries to write with it like a pencil, then he tries looking into it like a telescope and wearing a bunch of them like a hat. He then uses a celery stick as a backscratcher, then puts it in a vase. Afterwards, he tries to use a stalk of broccoli as a feather duster before putting it in the vase with the celery. After that, he spins a beet like a top, talks into a squash like a telephone, bounces an onion like a ball for jacks, and juggles some potatoes. When Ernie and Bert arrive at Cookie's house, they explain to him that vegetables are for making soup so it can be eaten.

* In ''WesternAnimation/AliceInWonderland1951'', The Mad Hatter and the March Hare try to fix the White Rabbit's watch by pouring whatever food they have around inside it, including butter, jam, tea (naturally), and lemon (but not mustard -- that would be silly).

* In ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe'':

** ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe2'':
*** Gru is once seen wearing a hat made out of corn chip.
*** Dr. Nefario laces some jelly with an antidote and loads it into guns to cure some transmogrified minions.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheLorax'', Grammy Norma bounces her jello around on her plate, causing her daughter Mrs. Wiggins to scold her for playing with her food.