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Instant Growth-Inducing Meal

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It's a well-known fact that nourishment is the key to growth, but in the world of fiction, this can become a lot more literal than expected—not to mention more dramatic: for some characters, eating can become an open invitation to immediately blossom into gianthood.

Though there are many possible reasons for this, the two most popular ones involve either a special food or a special character: either there's a Power-Up Food that has the effect of enhancing the consumer's size, or the character has the power to convert nutrition into instant growth. Depending on the nature of the growth involved, some more exotic variations of this trope may cross over with Weight Taller or even Plot-Relevant Age-Up.

Whatever the case, this essentially adds up to a food-activated Sizeshifter or Miracle-Gro Monster. As for how one returns to normal size, the character may have the power to revert on their own, there may be some other kind of food that reverses the effect, and in some cases, the trope may be inverted by having starvation making the character shrink. However, in a few unlucky cases, this transformation can't be reversed, and the character is now a giant full-time.

Please note: This has to be fueled by something that's being consumed as part of a meal of some kind. Ordinary magical potions treated as medicine instead of edibles do not apply.

Also note that this is a very common element in adaptations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and works that take influence from it.

Compare Balloon Belly and Dinner Deformation, for more exclusively horizontal forms of consumption-fueled growth.

Contrast Cast from Calories.

Sister Trope to Transformation Potion


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Eastern European Animation 
  • The Wolf and the Calf is about a wolf stealing a newborn calf and ending up adopting instead of eating him. The wolf brings the calf three meals, and each time, the calf spontaneously grows and matures right as he finishes it—the first two times being fully visible, the third time occurring behind closed doors from which a full-grown bull emerges.

    Fan Works 
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic The Grand and Bountiful Trixie, the titular character eats some enchanted food that fattens her up impossibly quickly. As explained in the narration, the spell also increases her muscle mass and enlarges her skeleton, so she remains mobile even as she bloats up to an "elephantine" size and towers over Princess Luna.
  • In the Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic, Muscle Bending (in which every female character from the series undergoes a Growing Muscles Sequence), Azula (who, in this universe, never stopped being evil even despite finding her and Zuko's Missing Mom) decides to jump on the bandwagon and try conquering the world by presenting her followers with a magic brew of tea she created that will make both their physical strength and bending abilities near-superhuman. To demonstrate this, she drinks the tea herself, and immediately afterwards, she grows both taller and more muscular, until she's a seven-foot tall Amazon. The finale, however, has Azula be outdone by her mother Ursa, who decides to put her through some Belated Child Discipline and beat her at her own game by drinking some magic tea herself, and outgrowing and outmuscling Azula by reaching a height of twelve feet (in contrast to Azula, though, Ursa's transformation is not shown directly, only the after-results, because point-of-view character Zuko averts his eyes to prevent being embarrassed by the sight of his mother growing like that).

    Films — Animation 
  • Alice in Wonderland (1951):
    • Alice finds cookies labeled "eat me" and finds that consuming them causes her to become a giant, and she starts crying, which floods the whole room. This is later inverted when she drinks a bottle labeled "drink me" and it causes her to shrink.
    • After Alice meets the smoking caterpillar, the bug tells her that half of the mushroom will make her grow, while the other half will diminish her size. The first time Alice eats the mushroom, she grows to a gigantic size and ends up dislodging a bird's nest from its place among the branches of a tall tree.
  • FernGully: The Last Rainforest: After escaping the prison tree, Hexxus is initially nothing more than a tiny incoherent blob of sludge. However, as he creeps through the Leveler, he's able to feed off gas leaking from the internal pipework, growing bigger with every meal as he progresses through the machine. Eventually, he reaches the top of the Leveler and feeds directly from one of its smokestacks, swelling into a giant Blob Monster complete with Resized Vocals—even calling the exhaust "mother's milk." For good measure, after going for a little while without feeding, he appears to shrink down until he's small enough to fit into one of the Leveler's vents.
  • The Loud House Movie: Lela starts out as a baby dragon but grows whenever she eats, quickly maturing into an adult as a result.
  • Paprika: In the finale of the animated film adaptation, when Dr Chiba and Paprika finally merge into one entity, they are reborn as an infant that just so happens to be the size of a semitrailer; Baby Chiba then begins inhaling the nightmare that's overtaken Tokyo and consuming it, experiencing a brief Balloon Belly before she suddenly grows and matures into a giant toddler. Devouring more of the nightmare causes her to grow up even further until Chiba is a kaiju-sized child who sets out to challenge the Chairman. Enraged at her defiance, he attempts to crush her skull with one hand, but Chiba just eats the hand and continues growing; as she devours more of the Chairman, she rapidly progresses through adolescence until he's been dragged screaming into her gaping maw, and she's grown up into an adult dream-goddess that towers over the city.
  • Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: Among the items in Jack Horner's arsenal is a cookie labeled "Eat Me" and a bottle labeled "Drink Me". Jack uses the cookie to grow to a massive size for the final battle.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Alice in Wonderland (2010): As with the original novel, helpings of the "Eat Me" cake cause Alice to grow taller within seconds of eating. After spending the first half of the film downing shots of "Drink Me" potion and shrinking progressively smaller to escape various obstacles, Alice is given some of the cake by the White Rabbit so she can restore herself to normal size... only to eat a bit too much and instantly shoot up to an absolutely gigantic height, leaving her visible and completely naked in front of the Queen of Hearts. Fortunately, Alice is able to take advantage of her newfound size to ingratiate herself with the Queen.
  • Little Shop of Horrors: Whenever Audrey II drinks blood or eats human flesh, it grows quite rapidly; indeed, after being fed a few drops of Seymour's blood in "Grow For Me," it begins sprouting large enough to almost burst out of its flowerpot within seconds of Seymour leaving the room.

    Literature 
  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: The cake labelled "EAT ME" causes Alice to grow into a giantess the moment she takes a bite of it, and it can only be counteracted by either the "DRINK ME" potion or the White Rabbit's fan, which make her shrink instead. Later, a potion she drinks in the White Rabbit's house has the same effect, while some cakes make her shrink again. Eventually she finds a mushroom, one side of which makes her grow while the other side makes her shrink, and she saves the two pieces of it and nibbles them to grow or shrink at will.
  • Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: When the two magicians are charged with creating nightmares for use against Britain's enemies, Jonathan Strange sends a dream to Tsar Alexander that features Napoléon Bonaparte unexpectedly transforming into a she-wolf, then devouring the Tsar's loved ones, growing bigger with every meal until it's the size of the Kremlin and goes on to eat all of Moscow. This is meant to be taken as a prophetic warning that Napoleon's unchecked ambition will destroy anyone who allies with him, and it's said to leave the Tsar deeply uncomfortable around Napoleon afterwards.
  • In Lord of the Rings, during their stay in Fangorn Forest Merry and Pippin largely subsist on the locals' Ent-draughts. This causes them to grow several inches into giants by Hobbit standards, excelling even the historical "Bullroarer" Took, who could ride a horse.
  • The Star Beast: Lummox's species grows in proportion to their food intake and can grow very quickly after a big meal. Lummox reached her multi-ton, multi-meter tall size after eating a car. Also, despite being a juvenile, she's large even for her species, to the point where she can't fit through the doors on their starships and needs to go on a diet when they come to retrieve her.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Gen V: Inverted; Emma's Sizeshifter powers require her to first induce vomiting to expel the excess body mass before she can shrink, often prompting unfriendly observers to belittle her both for the apparent uselessness of the power and the humiliating activation method. Later played straight when it's revealed that Emma can make herself grow by binge-eating, allowing her to become big enough to take on even the strongest of supes—provided she has enough food to gorge on in an emergency.
  • Super Sentai: A handful of series have the Monster of the Week for each episode grow into a giant by eating or drinking something.
    • Gekisou Sentai Carranger: Enemies grow by eating imo-yokan, a yellow cube-shaped Japanese confection made of sweet potatonote , agar (a jelly-like substance made from some species of red algae, used as a vegetarian substitute for gelatin), and sugar; only imo-yokan from a certain store, Imocho, triggers the growth effect. Inverted with expired imo-yokan, which only works for a short time, or shrinks the eater if they eat it while already giant.
    • Seijuu Sentai Gingaman: Enemies grow by drinking a substance called Balban Extract. Its Power Rangers adaptation Power Rangers Lost Galaxy had two of its earliest monsters (Radster and Horn) grow by drinking a similar formula, but this was dropped afterward.

    Video Games 
  • Alice: Madness Returns: After spending almost the entirety of the game being able to shrink at will thanks to her exposure to the Drink Me potion, Alice finds a piece of the Eat Me cake in Queensland. With the Executioner closing in on her, she eats some and immediately blossoms into a fifty-foot-tall giantess that gleefully crushes the stunned Executioner underfoot. Then, after demolishing most of the Queen of Hearts' army, she rips a fountain from the nearby plaza and drinks from it in order to shrink herself back down again.
  • Castle Crashers: Eating a sandwich makes your knight grow big and buff in an instant, making them strong enough to smash through obstacles they couldn't before. The effect is temporary, but this is for the better, since you can only use melee attacks while buff.
  • Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness: In Multiplayer Mode, the cake power-up causes the player who collects it to temporarily grow to the size of a giant, allowing them to squash the other players when they run over them.
  • Snake: In this series of arcade games, the player controls a snake that slithers around a rectangular room, directing it towards food and keeping it away from the walls. With every piece of food it eats, the snake grows longer. At first, this isn't a problem, as there's plenty of room, but as the snake grows longer, it becomes challenging not to smash against the walls or slam headfirst into the snake's increasingly lengthy body.
  • Snakebird: As with Snake, eating fruit grows by one block. This allows reaching across longer platforms.
  • Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!: In Shady Oasis, the local hippos are no bigger than Spyro, but can temporarily increase their size to giant proportions simply by eating a berry—making them very useful for breaking through barriers while on the way to the great berry bush at the heart of the Oasis... though it does mean that they run the risk of getting stuck in doorways if they eat one at the wrong time. Sadly, the berries don’t seem to do anything for Spyro.
  • The famous Super Mushrooms in Super Mario Bros. allow Mario and his friends to grow large and strong enough to break blocks. However, taking a hit will shrink them down instead of losing a life. New Super Mario Bros. exaggerates this with the Mega Mushroom, yet also inverts it with Mini Mushrooms. The former grow Mario to such a gargantuan size that he overgrows the height of the stage, kills enemies on contact and breaks all the pipes he walks into in half, while the latter shrink Mario to a miniature size, allowing him to run on water and fit through very small passages while making him unable to Goomba Stomp enemies without a Ground Pound and causing him to lose a life upon touching an enemy or a hazard as if he had no powerup at all.

    Web Video 
  • Pop Cross Studios: In this video depicting Super Mario Bros. as a horror story, the mushroom power-ups of the Fungal Kingdom have this effect on Mario, making him physically bigger each time he eats one. In contrast to the video game, this is not portrayed as a good thing, because each time Mario eats a mushroom, or any other power-up, a piece of fungus grows more from his back—and since the Toads and Fungal Queen Peach are more evil than in the original video games, that's exactly what they want, so they can turn Mario into their personal enforcer to help spread their infectious fungus from their world to Earth. However, Mario, despite his reluctance to actually eat the power-ups once he sees the cost, manages to use them to defeat Queen Peach—remembering that the Toads had packed a Mega Mushroom into his bag (but warned him not to eat it inside Bowser's castle), he eats that one last, and immediately grows to five times his size. Directly afterwards, Mario throws Peach's insults of him being a "pathetic little man" back in her face with "Who's little now?" And then, Mario uses his superior size to crush Peach under his hand in one blow, before setting about freeing his brother Luigi.

    Western Animation 
  • Fanboy and Chum Chum: In "Little Glop of Horrors", a new lunch lady, Mrs. Cram, serves nothing but gross red glop that she claims will make the kids "grow big and strong." After spending the whole episode avoiding it, the kids finally taste the glop, and it instantly turns them all into big, strong giants.
  • Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs: Zigzagged in "You're Too Little" — Harry is sick of being short, so when Nana tells him milk makes people grow, he drinks some, but it doesn't work. He goes to Dino World and drinks some magic milk that has different effects depending on which buttons you press on the robot cow that makes it — one makes his nose bigger, one makes him a giant, one shrinks him to ant-size, and one makes him normal-sized. When he returns to the normal world, he's given another glass of milk and is worried it'll change his size again, but then he drinks it and is fine.
  • Little Princess: Subverted in "I Want to Be Tall" — the Princess wants to be taller, so when she's served mashed potatoes and is told they'll make her grow "big and tall", she eats the whole family's servings. All it does is nauseate her.
  • My Friends Tigger & Pooh: Subverted. Roo thinks he's shrunk (actually due to being measured on a sunflower that's still growing). He tries to grow back to normal size by drinking a honeypot filled with milk, but it doesn't work.
  • In the Noveltoons short Cock-a-Doodle Dino, a baby dinosaur hatched in modern days grows up each time it eats. One case has it eating straw stored in a barn and instantly growing up big enough for the barn to hang off it like a coat.
  • The Penguins of Madagascar: In one episode, Kowalski brings a jello cube to life and names it Jiggles. However, Jiggles grows whenever it eats, and while it initially only eats fruit, by the time it's a giant, it starts eating the characters.
  • Zig & Sharko:
    • In "The Were-Yena", Zig decides to have Bernie create a super-protein potion to build up his muscles. Once he actually drinks it, though, it doesn't appear to do anything — until he eats a banana, at which point, he then turns into a gigantic, muscular, destructive monster who towers over the trees on his island. Bernie discovers that this is because of a random gorilla dropping a banana skin into the potion while it was still brewing. Worse still, while Zig's transformation only happens in short, temporary bursts, every time he eats a banana, he'll become the were-yena again — and because he suffers from Alternate Identity Amnesia, he won't remember what made him transform in the first place.
    • In the same episode, Zig actually nearly wins this episode by wiping the floor with Sharko in single combat, and then tricking Marina into letting him take her back to his island by making her think he's a Beauty and the Beast-style cursed prince... but then, once Marina finds out the truth from Bernie, and assists him in making an antidote potion while Zig's on another rampage, she can't resist sneaking a taste of said new potion herself. And then, once Zig is finally cured, and advancing on her with a knife and fork in hand, she eats a banana while walking towards him. And while we don't see Marina's transformation, we can tell by her imposing shadow stretching over Zig and Bernie that she's definitely not a little mermaid after eating that banana.

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Possessed Bubba

The possessed Bubba gets bigger with everything he eats.

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Main / InstantGrowthInducingMeal

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