History Main / PovertyFood

** The Roman Gladiators had [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3KANWtAHDc&t=2s&ab_channel=TastingHistorywithMaxMiller Puls]], a porridge made of barley and fava beans. The dish formed the staple of a gladiator's diet, save for [[PrisonersLastMeal the meals before games]]. This had the side effect of making gladiators become flabby and [[Gasshole flatulent]] [[note]] Max points out the flabbiness was probably an advantage in there line of work, since it would shield there vital organs[[/note]]

** The Roman Gladiators had [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3KANWtAHDc&t=2s&ab_channel=TastingHistorywithMaxMiller Puls]], a porridge made of barley and fava beans. The dish formed the staple of a gladiator's diet, save for [[PrisonersLastMeal the meals before games]]. This had the side effect of making gladiators become flabby and [[Gasshole flatulent]] [[Note]] Max points out the flabbiness was probably an advantage in there line of work, since it would shield there vital organs[[/note]]

** The Roman Gladiators had [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3KANWtAHDc&t=2s&ab_channel=TastingHistorywithMaxMiller Puls]], a porridge made of barley and fava beans. The dish formed the staple of a gladiator's diet, save for [[PrisonersLastMeal the meals before games]]. This had the side effect of making gladiators become flabby and flatulent.

** [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in the case of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPi0RiAsegQ&ab_channel=TastingHistorywithMaxMiller gruel]]. Despite being synonymous with this trope, gruel is really just the word for a thin porridge and was eaten by all social classes. Recipes were sometimes very fancy, using various spices, cream, or even brandy.

* ''ComicBook/LuckyLuke'': ''The Stagecoach'' features this as a RunningGag, where every single rest stop for the titular stagecoach only serves beans and bacon for the poor passengers. The one exception is one cook who serves beef and potatoes, because he's made a deal with the gambler who often taken the same route and bets with the other passengers what dinner will be served at that one stop. Hilariously, this even happens at the celebration banquet at the end, which is supposed to be high class but STILL serves some variation of beans and bacon in every course of the meal.
* ''ComicBook/AstroCity'': Quarrel II, the daughter of the original, villanous Quarrel, grew up in the rural Appalachians, and since money was usually in short supply, she would supplement the family's diet with possums, squirrels and other small animals. It apparently didn't taste very good but it kept them all fed.

* In ''Film/TheLittleRascals'' short "Mush and Milk", the gang are all living in a boarding school run by an old man who serves mush and (spoiled) milk every day because he doesn't have any money. He's waiting for his pension to come in. Once his pension comes in he treats the kids to a high class meal...which turns out to be porridge.

** As the war progressed, it was discovered that parts of the fungus bombs used by House Frankwrithe & Lewden are edible. Additionally the fungus bullets used by that same house turns out to be highly nutritious once the poisons in them have gone stale. People had been known to dig out bullets from corpses just to save for their next meal.

* In Jill Pinkwater's ''Literature/TheDisappearanceOfSisterPerfect'', the heroine infiltrates a cult and is put off by the cheap, institutional food (chipped beef, peas, and mashed potatoes, all described in the most unappetizing terms). It sticks to the roof of her mouth, which is too bad, because cult members are forbidden from drinking until ''after'' they have finished their food. The drink itself is described by one character as "instant flavored sugar water — cheaper than juice."

* In ''Literature/{{Matilda}}'', the titular character is visiting with Miss Honey in her home. She's astonished to see Miss Honey using margarine, and concludes that "She ''must'' be poor."

* ''Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream'': The main characters are forced to subsist on whatever disgusting scraps they can find, and even that is rare. Explicitly mentioned are some sort of worms, as well as "manna" that tastes like boar urine, and the plot revolves around the group trying to find a cache of canned food somewhere beneath the North Pole. The MasterComputer AM could easily provide them with any food imaginable, but only gives them near-inedible things out of sadistic cruelty, since it's intent on torturing the characters for all eternity, and keeping them on the brink of starvation is just part of it.

* The {{Satire}} news website ''The Website/BabylonBee'' [[note]](basically, the [[TheMoralSubstitute Christian]] version of ''WebSite/TheOnion'')[[/note]] tells of [[StarvingStudent a college student]] who [[http://babylonbee.com/news/college-student-tithes-ramen/ places a packet of ramen noodles into the offering plate at church]]. He considers it a worthy offering, because it's all he has.

* ''{{Website/Neopets}}:'' Omelettes and jelly have this status among players, being available for free once per day, cheap to buy in user shops, and counting as three and two portions of food, respectively. Other cheap-as-dirt foods include stuff gotten from dailies and whatever you can reel up at the the Underwater Fishing Cavern. Your pets will happily eat all of it, though, so some users feed their pets this stuff every day in order to save money for more expensive things.
* ''WebVideo/TastingHistoryWithMaxMiller'': Max tends to prepare meals eaten by the royalty and the very wealth, since those are more interesting to make and recipes for to poor didn't get written down as much. Despite this, he still features a number of foods for those of little means.
** The Roman Gladiators had [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3KANWtAHDc&t=2s&ab_channel=TastingHistorywithMaxMiller Puls]], a porridge made of barely and fava beans. The dish formed the staple of a gladiators diet, save for [[NoMrBondIExpectYouToDine the meals before games]]. This had the side effect of making gladiators becomes flabby and flatulent.

*** The low status of the bread even became a plot point in the Virgil's Aeneid. After an old man curses the trojans to suffer such hunger they will gnaw there very plates, a character realizes this has come true when he sees the Trojan's [[ExactWords eating there own trenchers]].

** Max has even made [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBurkdTyJhE&ab_channel=TastingHistorywithMaxMiller boiled leather]] based on a recipe left by one of Captain Morgans men.

* A RunningGag among the ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' fandom is that Reimu's shrine gets so little donations she eats ''grass'' growing through the flagstones.

* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'', Timmy wishes for everyone to be the same, including grey mush for food. It chime with the rest of the "everything is grey and homogeneous and boring" theme of the episode.

* Rice goes for pennies a pound, leading to many poorer people buying it as a substitute for potatoes. Cook it without seasoning, add a tin of baked beans for the protein, and you get the modern equivalent of sci-fi's cheap, flavourless/ill-tasting nutrient paste. Naturally, if the cook knows how to season the rice and cooks their own raw beans, expectations can be [[TastesBetterThanItLooks radically subverted]], as the cuisine of Latin American countries can demonstrate.

*** The low status of the bread even became a plot point in the Virgil's Aeneid. After an old man curses the trojans to suffer such hunger they will gnaw there very plates, a character realizes this has come true when he sees the Trojan's [[ExactWords eating there own trenchers]]

** The Roman Gladiators had Puls, a porridge made of barely and fava beans. The dish formed the staple of a gladiators diet, save for [[NoMrBondIExpectYouToDine the meals before games]]. This had the side effect of making gladiators becomes flabby and flatulent.
** Trenchers. They were made from torte bread, a type of bread made from unsifted flour of various grains. The torte loaf would then be cut in half and allowed to become stale. Trenchers were used by the wealthy as a plate to eat food on, and then afterwards were sometimes handed out to the poor.
The low status of the bread even became a plot point in the Virgil's Aeneid.
**

* ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' features this trope on a regular basis, due to their PerpetualPoverty. In the first episode, Spike complains that there's no beef in the bell peppers and beef Jet served for dinner, at which point Jet angrily retorts that it's because he can't afford to buy meat due to the money from the last bounty that Spike capture having to go to paying [[DestructiveSavior all the damages Spike caused]] while catching the guy. Another episode highlighted the crew glumly subsisting on self-cooking instant ramen because their funds are so low. Finally, the end of "Mushroom Samba" has them living off of a duffel bag's worth of dried shitake mushrooms (which their bounty insisted were the fun kind and worth a fortune).

* ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'': In ''Asterix The Legionary'', Asterix and Obelix join the Roman Legion to track down a fellow Gaul who had gone missing, and at dinnertime, Asterix remarks that armies are renowned for their crappy food, it keeps the soldiers in a bad mood and fierce in battle. Sure enough, they're served a horrific glop consisting of flour, bacon and cheese, cooked together to save time. Asterix sourly notes that he didn't think the Roman army would be quite ''that'' fierce. Hilariously, the British Legionnaire loves the food, commenting that it's just like the food back home.

* The eponymous ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' eats instant ramen most of the time, because that's all he can afford. (It helps that [[TrademarkFavoriteFood he likes it]], too.) He considers ramen from Ichiraku's Ramen Stand to be one of [[MundaneLuxury "the finer things in life,"]] and is always delighted when someone treats him to ramen from there (or when he can actually afford it.)

* In ''Fanfic/AWintersTale'', Castiel often ate food that is being disregarded from Gas-Z-Sip because it is spoiled like burnt nachos and dried hotdogs. He also ate moldy bread and cheese from dumpsters.

* ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager'', which is rife with [[{{Homage}} homages]] to classic ScienceFiction, includes a reference to zymoveal, a PovertyFood from Asimov's ''Literature/TheCavesOfSteel'' (see below). Paris ate it as a child, when his father was unemployed, and learned to doctor it with hot sauce.

* ''Literature/RamonaQuimby'' has an example of PovertyFood for pets rather than humans. When the family falls on hard times, they can only afford a cheap brand of cat food called Puss-puddy for the cat, which he hates.

* Amongst East and Southeast Asians, there's congee, which is made by boiling existing steamed rice to make a porridge-like meal. Using broth instead of water and throwing in chopped veggies (fresh or pickled) and meats can make it more palatable. Rather ironically, it also doubles as ComfortFood in areas that have seen rapid economic growth after World War II since due to the timing of their rises the current working or recently-retired adult generation would have likely grown up poor and eaten congee as PovertyFood due to their family's financial situation before it transitioned to ComfortFood nowadays because it's something Mama used to make for them when they were little.

* The {{Satire}} news website ''The Babylon Bee'' [[note]](basically, the [[TheMoralSubstitute Christian]] version of ''WebSite/TheOnion'')[[/note]] tells of [[StarvingStudent a college student]] who [[http://babylonbee.com/news/college-student-tithes-ramen/ places a packet of ramen noodles into the offering plate at church]]. He considers it a worthy offering, because it's all he has.

* TropeCodifier (if not TropeMaker) is probably Charles Dickens's novel ''Literature/OliverTwist''. Oliver is stuck in an OrphanageOfFear that keeps its charges just north of starvation on a bowl of thin gruel three times a day. In the book's signature scene, Oliver is moved by desperation to request a second bowl, outraging the attendants.

* ''Literature/OliverTwist'': Oliver is stuck in an OrphanageOfFear that keeps its charges just north of starvation on bowls of thin porridge. In the book's signature scene, Oliver is moved by desperation to request a second bowl, outraging the attendants.

* TropeCodifier (if not TropeMaker) is probably Charles Dickens's novel ''Literature/OliverTwist'' with his three bowls of thin gruel a day.

* ''Series/CobraKai'': When the series starts, Johnny is reduced to eating the "loser's lunch" mentioned in Real Life below, i.e. single slices of fried bologna. For an extra kicker, he can only afford the red sticker, half-off, expires-soon bologna.

** Somewhat similar is a sugar sandwich in the US, which acts as a poor man's jelly sandwich and has precisely two ingredients. No, this does not include butter.

* Food deserts are areas where large grocery stores refuse to set up shop because of low return yields, like far-flung small rural towns, and safety issues, like the inner cities, or increasingly because of competition with dollar stores. As a result locals, instead of eating fresh food, often have to rely on whatever highly-processed packaged food they can buy in the nearest convenience store or fast food joint.

* In a similar vein, gruel. Two ingredients: a big pot of hot water and a handful of oatmeal. Maybe some legumes if you've got the cash, and if you really want to splurge, use milk instead of water. It was originally invented by people who were too poor to afford ''bread,'' according to Wiki/TheOtherWiki.
* Resorting to eating bugs, which can be dangerous because some are toxic, and others carry parasites and/or diseases.
** Averted for some people/cultures that treat them as regular cuisine. There's a growing community of insectivores that breed bugs purely for consumption, and say that they have as much, if not more, protein as meat.

* ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' features this trope on a regular basis, due to their PerpetualPoverty. In the first episode, Spike complains that there's no beef in the bell peppers and beef Jet served for dinner, at which point Jet angrily retorts that it's because he can't afford to buy meat due to the money from the last bounty that Spike capture having to go to paying [[DestructiveSavior all the damages Spike caused]] while catching the guy. Another episode highlighted the crew glumly subsisting on self-cooking instant ramen because their funds are so low. Finally, the end of ''Mushroom Samba'' (yes, the drug trip episode) has them living off of a duffel bag's worth of dried shitake mushrooms (which their bounty insisted were the fun kind and worth a fortune).
* Referenced in ''Manga/FoodWars'': One of Kouijirou Shinomiya's signature ingredients is burdock root, which is a popular vegetable in Japan, but had fallen out of fashion due to its status as poverty food in France, where Shinomiya had his culinary training.

* ''Fanfic/{{Touch}}'': Roxy grew up eating little but cup ramen and canned tuna thanks to her poor, abusive mother not buying much else.

* Amongst East and Southeast Asians, there's congee, which is made by boiling existing steamed rice to make a porridge-like meal. Using broth instead of water and throwing in chopped veggies and meats can make it more palatable.

** Subverted for some people/cultures that treat them as regular cuisine. There's a growing community of insectivores that breed bugs purely for consumption, and say that they have as much, if not more, protein as meat.

On one end of the SlidingScaleOfShinyVersusGritty we have GrapesOfLuxury to indicate an [[TheBeautifulElite upper class]] environment. On the other end of the spectrum we have Poverty Food for [[WrongSideOfTheTracks lowlifes]], [[OrphanageOfFear neglected orphans]], [[HellHolePrison prison inmates]], {{starving artist}}s, [[StarvingStudent broke college students]], and anyone else stuck in a CrapsackWorld.

Compare MockMeal, EatTheDog, NoPartyLikeADonnerParty. See MessOnAPlate, MysteryMeat, and NondescriptNastyNutritious when the focus is on the visual and tasting experience of the food rather than the social implications of a dire meal. See FrozenDinnerOfLoneliness for when lonely characters eat convenience food. Contrast FoodPorn and SnootyHauteCuisine. Often used for PovertyForComedy. May lead to characters craving a BlackMarketProduce.

Compare MockMeal, EatTheDog, NoPartyLikeADonnerParty. See MessOnAPlate, MysteryMeat, and NondescriptNastyNutritious when the focus is on the visual and tasting experience of the food rather than the social implications of a dire meal. See FrozenDinnerOfLoneliness for when lonely characters eat convenience food. Contrast FoodPorn. Often used for PovertyForComedy. May lead to characters craving a BlackMarketProduce.

* In Jill Pinkwater's ''The Disappearance of Sister Perfect'', the heroine infiltrates a cult and is put off by the cheap, institutional food (chipped beef, peas, and mashed potatoes, all described in the most unappetizing terms). It sticks to the roof of her mouth, which is too bad, because cult members are forbidden from drinking until ''after'' they have finished their food. The drink itself is described by one character as "instant flavored sugar water — cheaper than juice."