Basic Trope: Trying to get someone to eat something by eating a bit of it yourself.
- Straight: Alice is trying to get her three-year-old son Bob to eat his spaghetti, but even though he's hungry, he doesn't want to for some reason, so she takes a forkful of pasta, eats it, and says, "MMM! Now you!".
- Exaggerated: Alice actually eats the whole plate of spaghetti and makes Bob some more in order to demonstrate.
- Downplayed: Alice uses her own plate of spaghetti to demonstrate.
- Justified:
- Bob was actually worried that the spaghetti was dangerous, so seeing his mother eat it and be OK reassured him, or if he didn't really think that, Alice thought he did.
- Bob thinks his mother is cool and so if she does something, he'll want to do it too. Alice knows this and uses it to her advantage.
- Bob didn't know how and Alice was teaching him.
- Inverted: Bob tries to eat something that's not food, so Alice tries to demonstrate not eating it.
- Subverted: Alice takes a forkful of pasta, lifts it to her mouth, then changes her mind.
- Double Subverted: But when Bob still refuses to eat, Alice does it.
- Parodied: Alice is a messy eater, then Bob copies her and eats as messily as she does, much to the dismay of Charlie, the Neat Freak dad of Bob and husband of Alice.
- Zigzagged: Alice keeps considering doing this, then changing her mind.
- Averted: Alice does not use this tactic on Bob.
- Lampshaded: "You're supposed to be feeding him, Alice, not yourself!"
- Enforced: ???
- Invoked: "Try letting him see you eat some, he might copy!"
- Exploited: Alice is a Big Eater nanny, so she uses this on the picky kids as an excuse to get free food.
- Defied: "I'm not eating Bob's food, he has to eat it!"
- Discussed: "So, do I eat some of it myself to demonstrate?"
- Conversed: "Remember that scene where he didn't want to eat his spaghetti, so his mom ate some for him?"
- Implied: "Okay, I finally got the baby to eat. But next time, you're on feeding duty," says Alice to her spouse as she wipes the meat-flavored baby food off her face with a disgusted shudder.
- Deconstructed: ???
- Reconstructed: ???
- Played for Laughs:
- Alice tries to use this method on the dog, then spits out the dog food in disgust.
- When Alice says, "Now you!", Bob eats some spaghetti off her plate.
- Played for Drama:
Back to Feed by Example.
