Too Unhappy to Be Hungry

"Oh dear! You must be really sad if you won't eat chicken!"

— Princess, Little Princess, "I Didn't Do It"

We all need food to survive and most of us enjoy it too, but sometimes, we're too sad, scared, or angry to eat, and that's what this trope is.

If they're sad, maybe they're grieving or getting over a bad breakup, but they could also have just had a bad day. Likewise, if they're afraid, their fear could be crippling anxiety or a response to a serious threat, but it's just as likely to be a mild thing like Performance Anxiety.

Whatever the reason, they just can't bring themselves to eat much, if at all. This can lead to someone immediately noticing that something is amiss if the person usually loves to eat or loves the food in particular, and in these cases, the person will either lie and say, "I'm just not hungry", "I'm just tired" (followed by going to bed), or "I think I'm coming down with something" or open up.

Opening up will usually lead to the other person giving them a pep talk (which might also happen if they lie and the person doesn't believe it, prompting a line such as "Come on— I know something's bothering you. Spill."), and/or the person whose appetite was gone going on a long, angry rant. The emotional non-eater might also be mistaken for being unwell by a character who thinks Appetite Equals Health. Another variation is for someone to offer a sad character some Comfort Food, only for the character to turn it down.

Quite often the character's behaviour depends on their emotion: scared characters often pick at their food or eat it slowly, sad characters do either of those or push it away, and angry characters will often angrily play with it before pounding their utensil into it, throwing it, or similar.

There is a grain of truth to this trope: nervousness does indeed tend to cause a loss of appetite (although not in all cases; in fact, some people's appetite actually increases when they're afraid) and if the fear/sadness/anger is keeping someone preoccupied, they may simply be too distracted to eat. Loss of appetite related to sadness is less common though and when it does happen it's usually connected to a psychological trauma such as grief or depression (though loss of appetite connected to ordinary sadness isn't unheard of) and loss of appetite related to anger is even rarer. Often in real life, the unhappiness kills one's drive to get food rather than their actual hunger — they're hungry but they can't muster the willpower to get up and make or buy food and are complacent to just sit there and go without.

Compare Lost My Appetite and its sub-trope Put Off Their Food where the loss of appetite is due to simple disgust, Does Not Like Spam where they'd never eat that food anyway, Too Upset to Create for another instance of not doing something due to a low mood, I'm Not Hungry for when they actually are hungry but are choosing not to eat in protest, and Forgets to Eat for when they're simply distracted. Contrast Heartbreak and Ice Cream, Post-Stress Overeating, and Inappropriate Hunger. In extreme cases, it might lead to Death by Despair.

Note: When adding examples, remember that "depressed" doesn't just mean "sad"; depression is a psychological condition.

---

Examples:

Animation

• Bread Barbershop: In "Potato Chip and Sausage", Wilk, thinking about how Sausage must be with the villainous Chip (who had won him in a bet earlier), refuses to eat the soup Master Bread makes him and is shown to have not eaten in a while. Meanwhile, Sausage is too sad about Wilk to eat the dog food Chip gives him.
• Flower Angel: When he sees Lucio capturing a fairy for himself, and before that when he has nightmares about that person, Kukuru becomes too worried to bother eating the sweet treats An'an and Qianhan try to give him. Normally Kukuru has enough of a Sweet Tooth that he would gladly eat those treats without question.

Anime & Manga

• Happens to Gluttony in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), after the death of his Platonic Life Partner, Lust. Given that Gluttony lives to eat, it's a clear sign that his grief is getting to him. His creator fixes that by erasing his mind.
• In episode 46 of Inazuma Eleven, Endou became depressed due to blaming himself for Fubuki's injury and Kazemaru leaving the team. When Aki tries to give him a plate of rice balls, Endou refuses to eat.
• Pretty Cure:
  • In episode 23 of Doki Doki! PreCure, Mana falls in a funk after she got separated from a brainwashed Regina and stripped of her Transformation Trinket by Cure Ace, to the point of refusing food and locking herself in her room.
  • In episode 24 of Maho Girls Pretty Cure!, Mirai doesn't want to eat breakfast because she had a rough night sharing a bed with Kotoha.
• In Tokyo Ghoul, Tsukiyama, a ghoul known as "The Gourmet", becomes so depressed after Kaneki's apparent death that he refuses to eat anything, wasting away to a skeleton in the process. It takes the news that Kaneki is alive to snap him out of his depression and begin eating again.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: It's an O.O.C. Is Serious Business moment when Jughead loses his appetite, such as when he dreams of January McAndrews, Archie's time traveling descendant from the 29th century, and gets upset about it.
• In the Asterix book "Asterix the Legionary", Obelix eats two boars instead of his normal three because he has a crush on a woman. Asterix is immediately worried.

Comic Strips

• In a 1960s Peanuts arc, after Lucy buried Linus' blanket, he lamented that all the food tasted too sour to eat.
• An 1990 editorial cartoon by Mike Luckovitch of the Atlanta Constitution, made in response to the death of Jim Henson, depicted a distressed Cookie Monster sitting by the food table at Henson's wake, with one concerned attendee stating that he hasn't touched the cookies.

Fan Works

• The Blood of the Covenant: After Kallik is kidnapped by Iroh and Lu Ten (and believes that Aang, Katara, and Sokka are dead), he stops eating for a few days. Part of it is a hunger strike, and the other part is a lack of appetite due to grief. Lu Ten eventually has to manipulate the kid into eating again.
• Cold Temperatures, Warm Hearts: After Vanilla loses her home to a fire, she's too distraught to accept any of the pizza her father offers her.
• Craving the Sky: After learning that her teammate Blake is a Faunus, Weiss, who is secretly a Faunus herself and was raised to be deeply ashamed of that, is so distressed that she starts missing meals.
• In the second story of the Facing the Future Series, Danny wins a free buffet, but is too bummed out about Sam being out of town to eat. Tucker convinces him to have at least one bite, which turns out to be a mistake as the whole thing turned out to be a trap set up by Desiree, and the moment Danny took the first bite, her spell causes him to keep eating for two hours straight, leaving him so full that he could stand up to a gathering of his Rogues Gallery that ambushed him outside the buffet.
• The first chapter of Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail has Chloe unable to indulge in any of the curries Mr. Mime made for her due to 1) getting her ass kicked in a Pokémon battle by Ash after her classmates pressured her to fight him, and 2) the curry reminding her of her former childhood friend Goh and how she resents him spending more time with Ash than with her.
• In The Loud House fanfiction:
  • Anger Management: Lynn loses her appetite after Lincoln beats her up.
  • In Cleansing, Luan is in a funk and only eats a third of her food.
  • Lucy's Secret: Lucy is still too shy to tell her parents that she wets the bed, so she decides to just put on one of her baby sister Lily's diapers instead. However, this deeply troubles her, so she eats less at dinner and turns down some pie.
• I am Here, a My Hero Academia fic, has Midoriya too distressed to eat after he was gang-raped the day before. He accepts All Might’s friendly persuasion to eat a little, but asks that certain soft, mushy textures be avoided for understandable reasons.
• In What You Wish For, this is subverted when Lori thinks Lincoln is too sulky to go down for dinner but really he isn't there, and then played straight when Luan loses her appetite due to being sad about being grounded.
• In the Turning Red fanfic The Panda Chronicles chapter "Hard to Stomach", Tae-young won't eat his dinner because he's upset about Jesse being sick. Aaron T. tells him jokes to get him to eat.
• Lab Rat: After his parents almost dissected him and learned his secret in the process, Danny is so depressed and traumatized that he doesn't eat the soup Jazz made for him.
• The Secret Return of Alex Mack: Alex loses her appetite after Shar's Heroic Suicide. Not only is it concerningly out-of-character for her, it's actually dangerous due to her powers requiring extra food. Her parents become quite worried.
• She's Mine Then: After Alma forces Mirabel's family to disown her for not being Gifted, leaving her in the care of her aunt Pepa and uncle Félix, the five-year-old is so distressed that she stops eating regularly.
• In the Sherlock Holmes fic A Study In Situations, the last ficlet, concerning Mary and Watson's wedding, involves Watson half-playfully scolding his friend for disrupting the ceremony by passing out during the vows. He had not eaten for three days prior. When Watson asks why, Holmes mutters that it's not the same eating by himself.
• The first segment in a collection of Battlestar Galactica (1978) stories Wishes And Dreams has Starbuck having lost his appetite due to having to hide his desires for Apollo as well as having nightmares of his death back in the 'War of the Gods' two-parter, but (slowly) gets better three segments later when Apollo returns his feelings.

Films — Animation

• Big Hero 6: It's made painfully clear that Hiro's so depressed after his brother Tadashi's death that he hasn't left his room in days and hasn't been eating either. When Aunt Cass brings him breakfast, his dinner from the night before is still sitting where she left it.
• The Land Before Time: Following his mother's death, Littlefoot spends much of his time moping; when a baby pterosaur offers him a berry, he doesn't even react. The narrator even lampshades this:
  Narrator: At first, all that Littlefoot could think about was his mother. He hardly noticed his own hunger, and he almost completely forgot about the Great Valley, and that he must somehow reach it.
• In The Lorax (2012), the Once-ler tries to cheer up Pipsqueak with a marshmallow after he's sad about being forced to leave home. Pipsqueak rejects it.
• Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas: In "A Very Goofy Christmas", Goofy falls into a funk after failing to prove to his son that Santa is real. Max tries to cheer his dad up by offering the milk and cookies he left out, but he rejects it.
• Ratatouille: This happens to Remy when he and Linguini have a falling-out over him letting his clan raid the food locker at Gusteau's kitchen.
  Remy: You're right, Dad. Who am I kidding? We are what we are, and we're rats. Well, they'll leave soon, and now you know how to get in. Steal all you want. (starts walking away)
  Django: You're not comin'?
  Remy: I've lost my appetite.

Films — Live-Action

• A Child Is Waiting: When Clark transfers Jean away from Reuben's cottage, Reuben becomes so upset that he stops eating.
• Following her breakup in Crazy Rich Asians, Rachel is shown apparently too despondent to eat, even when brought food. She gets better.
• Martha from The Daisy Chain was so upset by her infant daughter's death that she stopped eating for a time.
• Dancing Trees: At the institution where her father dumps her, the autistic teenager Martha is so miserable that she stops talking or eating.
• In one of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies, Greg feels guilty about not owning up when Rowley gets punished for something he (Greg) did because Greg was wearing Rowley's coat. His mother Susan observes that he hasn't "badgered [her] for any snacks" and asks if he's OK.
• In Eskimo Day, the students who are attending interviews at the University of Cambridge barely want to eat, as lampshaded by a cafe owner, who comments that all they want to do before their interview is throw up.
• Fear Clinic: Caylee's bulimia is apparently psychological in nature and related to how she'd been eating when the masked man appeared, killing her brother and nearly her and Dylan.
• In Les Fugitifs, Jeanne refuses to eat after getting separated from her father and placed into an orphanage.
• In The Giant (2016), Rikard invites his Missing Mom to his thirtieth birthday party, but she doesn't show up. Rikard is too disappointed to eat any of the cake, even though it was made to look like his favorite hat.
• Referenced in The Goonies. After Troy's father and his lawyer drop off the papers for the foreclosure on the Walsh house, Chunk says, "I think I lost my appetite." Subverted a minute later when he's seen spraying a can of whipped cream into his mouth.
• In the 2007 film version of Hairspray, Link appears at the Turnblad's house worried about Tracy, who's missing after fleeing from being arrested at the protest march, but also because he feels guilty about not going with her and the other black dancers marching.
  Link Larkin: I shoulda been there, beside her. I can't sleep. I can't eat...
  Edna Turnblad: You can't eat? Well, come on in and worry with us. I'll make you some pork.
• The Innocent (1994): When Barlow first takes Gregory to his cabin to protect him, Gregory refuses to eat because he misses his caseworker Pamela.
• Mandy (1952): The morning after Mandy arrives at the residential school for the deaf, she misses her mother so badly that instead of eating, she stares into her cereal, then angrily shoves it away.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe: Played with in Thor: there's a scene where Thor's friends are worrying about the dire straits Asgard is in, and one of them points out that Big Eater Volstagg's appetite hasn't been affected, obliging him to assure them that that doesn't mean he's not just as worried as the rest of them.
  Volstagg: Do not mistake my appetite for apathy!
• Midway (2019). Before the Battle of Midway, the pilots are shown at the dinner table in the wardroom, but none of them are eating until Best gives them a pep talk that calms their nerves a bit.
• The Night Clerk (2020): When Bart's fingerprints are found in the room where Karen was murdered, meaning the police actually have solid evidence against him, he becomes so upset that he stays in bed and misses dinner. His mom gives him a pep talk, reminding him of how much it hurt after his father died, and how they managed to survive anyway. She succeeds in convincing Bart to eat.

Literature

• Animorphs: In one book, Cassie ends up on a plane to Australia. Once she returns, she's told that the entire time she was gone, Jake didn't eat, didn't sleep, obsessively staked out all known Yeerk locations and only uttered one intelligible sentence: "I have to FIND HER."
• In Anne of Green Gables, Anne often declares she doesn't want to eat when she is in despair.
• Alison from Are You Alone on Purpose? barely eats during the last six weeks of middle school because of Harry's relentless harassment.
• In Armada, Zack refuses to partake in the pre-battle feast with his comrades because he feels that if he's going to die, he wants his last meal to be the breakfast that his mother made for him that morning.
• The Ballad of Black Tom: After Tommy's father is murdered, he goes out to eat with Buckeye, who doesn't know what happened. He can't even look at his plate.
• In Bat and the Waiting Game, Bat smuggles Thor the skunk to Janie's school play, and he sprays in the middle of her solo, causing everyone to flee the auditorium. The next morning, Janie and Bat are both too upset to eat breakfast, even when their mom offers to make chocolate chip pancakes.
• In Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast, after Beauty's father loses his fortune, Beauty and her sister Hope need to take turns persuading him and their eldest sister Grace to eat. The father's despair is over the financial disaster, while Grace's is because her sailor fiancé was presumably drowned in the same storm that wrecked their ships.
• Because of the Rabbit: Lapi, the titular rabbit, is so stressed out that he doesn't eat for some time after Emma's father takes him in. Emma eventually manages to calm him down by putting him and his food in an upside-down laundry basket so he can have more freedom of movement.
• In Charlotte's Web, when rain prevents Fern from paying her usual visit to Wilbur and none of the other barn animals want to play with him, Wilbur feels too sad and lonely to eat his slops. The humans worry that he might be sick and give him a tonic of sulphur and molasses, which only makes him more miserable.
• In Danny, the Champion of the World, Danny and his father are too afraid to eat their food because they plan to poach a whole lot of pheasants the next day. Downplayed though as they're not really unhappy, they're excited as well as afraid.
• In the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book "Dog Days", Greg's fish dies, leaving him "bummed out", so he picks at his food over brunch.
• In Elsie Dinsmore, Elsie is punished by her father for freeing a hummingbird he trapped in a jar. When she's sent to her room with one of her hands tied up, she's extremely upset. Later, he tries to get her to come down and eat dinner, but she's too sad to do so. Instead of understanding the problem and giving her her space, Horace forces her to eat, thinking she's being willfully disobedient and naughty (which she isn't, but her father is too much of a stern authoritarian Jerkass to believe otherwise, even when he's told by others she's not like that), scolding her for sulking about the punishment.
• The Fault in Our Stars: At the beginning, Hazel barely eats due to depression over her terminal cancer. Later, she also does this while grieving Augustus's death.
• I Wish You All the Best: In the hours before Ben comes out to their parents as nonbinary, they're too anxious about it to eat more than a few bites of dinner.
• Julia's Kitchen: Cara eats dinner on Saturday evening. The next morning, before breakfast, she learns that her mother and her sister both died in a House Fire. She doesn't eat again until Monday night.
• Les Misérables:
  • After Fantine is fired from the factory and forced to earn a meager living as a seamstress, she remarks that she can get by because "when one is sad, one eats less."
  • Near the end of the novel, Jean Valjean stops eating after he's separated from his adopted daughter Cosette. It's ambiguous whether sheer despair or starvation is what causes his death in the end.
• Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse: Lilly can't resist showing off her purse when she's not supposed to, and as a result, Mr. Slinger takes it away for the day. She's so upset that she can't even bring herself to eat a snack before recess.
• Lost Voices: On Luce's last day of school before she transforms into a mermaid, a storm occurs that's similar to the one that killed her father. The storm combined with the fact that it's almost the first anniversary of his death upsets Luce so much that she doesn't eat lunch.
• In Madeline In London, Pepito is so unhappy about having to move to London and leave his Paris friends behind that he just picks at his food and loses weight until he looks like a stick. This is what makes his parents invite Miss Clavel and the girls to London for a visit.
• A Mango-Shaped Space: After Mango the cat dies, Mia barely eats for the next few days. When she does manage to choke down food, it tastes like wet cardboard.
• In The Mer, Val swims back to the beach where she drowned and transformed into a Mer in order to catch one last glimpse of her family, where she overhears her brother saying that her parents haven't eaten since she disappeared two days ago.
• The Mermaid's Mirror: After Lena goes into the ocean with Melusina to stay with the society of merfolk, her father spends days sitting on the beach. His wife tries to coax him to eat, with little success. He also grows a beard.
• In the Mog book "Mog and the V-E-T", Mog doesn't want her food because she's too sad about the pain from her splinter. Truth in Television as cats are often off their food when they're injured.
• In Murder On The Links, Madame Renauld is deeply shocked and sinks into grief after her husband's murder and doesn't want to eat.
• During The One and Only Ivan, Ivan's a Big Eater, as you might expect from a fully grown gorilla. After his best friend dies in the next cage over, he's heartbroken and notes that he's lost his appetite completely... well, almost.
• Orange Clouds, Blue Sky: After Mom and Dad separate, Mom stays in her room talking to no one. Skye tries to cook her meals, but Mom won't eat most of them.
• The Other Boy: During Shane's Heroic BSoD from being Forced Out of the Closet, he barely eats because his favorite foods all taste awful to him. When he recovers enough to take a shower, he notices his ribs and collarbone sticking out.
• Discussed in Thrymskvidha, one of the standalone songs of Poetic Edda. Freyja's maidservant tells the giant Thrymr that Freyja was so eager to get to Jotunheim and marry Thrymr that she hasn't eaten for several days; that's why she eats so much at the wedding feast. The truth, however, is that Thor is disguised as Freyja and Loki as the maidservant.
• Roys Bedoys: In “Stop Cyberbullying, Roys Bedoys!”, Hopper is so embarrassed about having been cyberbullied that he doesn’t want to eat his favourite food.
• Subverted in Ruslan And Lyudmila by Alexander Pushkin. When Lyudmila is kidnapped by Chernomor who then presents her with a lavish feast, she says a long monologue that she'd rather die than take his gifts, thinks a while, and starts eating.
  • Played straight in the opera based on the poem, where Lyudmila does adamantly refuse any of Chernomor's gifts until she gets rescued.
• Sanctuary: Half the living inhabitants of Casswell Park respond to the ghost eater's attacks by becoming ravenously hungry, while the other half, including Morgan, lose most of their appetites.
• In Stuart Little, when Stuart goes missing, the rest of the Littles don't enjoy their stew.
• The Syrena Legacy: On Emma's first day of school after Chloe's death, her mom makes her garbage eggs, but Emma is too sad to do anything but push them around on the plate.
• In The Tenth Good Thing About Barney by Judith Viorst, the little boy narrator won't eat his chicken on the night after his cat Barney dies.
• In There Lived An Old Lady Who Wore Green Boots by Yulia Voznesenskaya, Natasha tries it after her boyfriend dies, she says, while actually he has simply insulted her so deeply that she decides he is dead to her. Her grandmother gently talks her out of it, citing her own experience with grief and reminding Natasha starvation can do her growing body no good.
• Things I Should Have Known: After Chloe finds out that Ethan is going to be institutionalized, she's so upset that she skips dinner.
• Too Bright to See: On the day of Uncle Roderick's funeral, Bug pushes food around on the plate, only eating tiny bites. Mom does the same.
• Venus Among the Fishes: After the orca White Fang is captured by humans and put in a tank, he's so lonely, bored, and miserable that he loses his appetite and eats only a few fish a day. He gets thinner and thinner until Mark cuts the fence separating his enclosure from the sea, allowing him to escape.
• Warrior Cats: Sometimes cats refuse to eat if they're too upset, such as in Onestar's Confession when Ashfoot remains in her den, worrying about her missing son.
• In Wuthering Heights, Catherine Earnshaw Linton locks herself in her bedroom and refuses to eat for days after a fight between her lover Heathcliff and husband Edgar. This is partly out of genuine despair and partly a deliberate choice to make Heathcliff and Edgar feel guilty.

Live-Action TV

• In The Big Bang Theory episode "The Jerusalem Duality", Sheldon is upset that a much younger kid is smarter than him, he thinks he's useless.
  Sheldon: Why waste food? In Texas, when a cow goes dry, they don't keep feeding it. They just take her out back and shoot her between the eyes.
• Friends:
  • Played with in the episode "The One After Vegas". Big Eater Joey has just heard bad news about the movie where he was supposed to play the lead. At the hotel breakfast buffet...
    Joey: Mornin' Pheebs. Well, my movie has officially been canceled.
    Phoebe: Oh Joey, I'm so sorry. You want some of my breakfast?
    Joey: Nah, I'm too depressed to eat. I'll probably eat in like 5 minutes.
    [five minutes later...]
    Joey: Where is the waitress? I'm starving!
  • There's an example in "The One Where Chandler Takes A Bath." Joey is struggling with his (to him) inappropriate feelings for Rachel, so he's a bit dejected. He goes to Chandler for advice...
    Joey: [entering] Hey, Chandler, you got a minute? I-I really need to talk to you.
    Chandler: Oh! Uh, yeah! Is this a cold pizza talk or a leftover meatloaf talk?
    Joey: Well, neither.
    Chandler: Oh my God, what's up?
• In the miniseries based on Going Postal, Moist discovers that one of his large-scale cons caused the ruin of his beloved Adora's family. He is so struck with guilt and remorse that, when he meets Adora in a restaurant, he admits he can't think about food.
• In the Halt and Catch Fire episode "Goodwill", Joe spends a day in a deep depression over Gordon's death, and snaps at Bos when the latter tries to offer him some food.
• In episode 3 of Horatio Hornblower, Archie becomes so depressed about his prolonged captivity in El Ferrol that he stops eating. Horatio has to nurse him back to health when this nearly kills him.
• Played for Laughs on The Nanny. When Fran tries to cheer a brokenhearted Maggie up with cookies, she bitterly remarks that she's too sad to eat. Fran, who has the polar opposite philosophy when upset, whines that she wishes she had Maggie's problem.
• The Odd Couple: In the episode "Sleepwalker", Oscar begins smacking Felix with a newspaper in his sleep after trying to suppress his irritation. After some time with Oscar hitting him nightly, Felix appears at the breakfast table with a suitcase. Oscar tries to offer him breakfast to make him feel better, but Felix says he's not hungry. He then calls himself a "bad seed" and laments that he makes people hate him without knowing why. Once he and Oscar have figured out why all this has been happening, his appetite returns.
• In season 3 of Once Upon a Time, when Rumplestiltskin goes to Neverland, Belle is so tormented by her anxiety about him and her inability to help him in any way that she doesn't feel hungry. The characters mention that she has turned down four cheeseburgers in five days.
• In Prehistoric Park, Martha the mammoth loses her appetite after she's brought to the park. The zookeepers first assume they're feeding her the wrong kind of plants, but then they realize she's sad because she's a herd animal kept in solitary confinement. They introduce her to a herd of African elephants, which brings her appetite back.
• Star Trek:
  • In an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Quark goes to stay with his mother because he's in a funk and he claims he's too sad to want his dinner. Later, after the Grand Nagus breaks up with his mother, she's too sad to want her dinner.
  • In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Imaginary Friend", Troi feels guilty about trying to wean a little girl off her imaginary friend, so she doesn't want her cake.
  • In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Extreme Risk", B'Elanna is going through psychological trauma as a result of the fact that everyone in an organisation she used to work for have been imprisoned or killed. When Neelix offers her banana pancakes, she doesn't want them. As a sign of her getting better at the end of the episode, she eats the banana pancakes and smiles in pleasure.
• In an episode of Worzel Gummidge, Aunt Sally gets fired and when Worzel offers her acorns to eat, she says, "I don't want acorns. I don't want anything. I'm so miserable!".

Webcomics

• Yumi's Cells: Big Eater Yumi loses her appetite when Hunger Cell's antenna falls off. Without her largest cell's power and the sweet food that Hysterius is weak to, Hysterius runs rampant in her mind. It's particularly bad when Yumi feels guilty for "stealing" her best friend's crush, and she gets indigestion.

Web Original

• The basis of the "Babe, You OK?" meme, where the asker wonders if their partner is upset since they've barely touched a novelty food item.
• During the Dream SMP's Exile arc, Tommy displayed this trait alongside a whole host of other symptoms of depression and PTSD, brought on by the isolation and Dream's abuse. Tommy would often go without eating for long periods of time, even when his health was dangerously low and he was starting to run out of sprint. He also never bothered to make a proper farm to get a reliable food source, instead relying on gifts from other people and later the soup from the mooshroom Antfrost gave him. After he escaped to Techno's house, he veered sharply into the other direction, and would start stress-eating golden apples when faced with even the smallest possible threat.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: After the events of "Reunion" and losing Anne's friendship after betraying her... again, Sasha is in a Heroic Blue Screen of Death. When Grime makes worm pancakes for breakfast, Sasha says she isn't hungry ^note The girls had been eating bugs for months at that point, so it's not because they had worms in them, which tips Grime off that she's depressed.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: In The Legend of Korra, when Korra goes home to recuperate after being poisoned by Zaheer and is struggling with PTSD, her mother mentions that she's barely eaten in the weeks since she arrived.
• The Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "Love Is A Many Splintered Thing" has the Rangers battle with a group of thieves at the start. Afterwards, Monterey Jack is upset about something to the point where he even refuses to eat cheese. It turns out it's because he smelled his former girlfriend's perfume during the battle.
• In the series finale of Code Lyoko, Odd, who normally eats two meals worth of food during lunch, refuses Aelita's croissant when she offers it to her, citing that for once, he is not that hungry. The rest of the team also admits the same, due to being depressed at having to move on from being Lyoko Warriors.
• In Futurama, after Fry gets kicked out of the Planet Express building after living there for a month and becomes homeless, Fry and Bender eat at the "Food O Mat" where Bender comments that he's barely touched his amoeba; Fry pokes a giant amoeba on a plate with his fork and glumly says, "It looked good, but I just don't feel like eating."
• In the Little Princess episode "I Didn't Do It", Scruff is sad about having to stay in his kennel and Princess tries to cheer him up by feeding him chicken, which he doesn't want.
• The Loud House:
  • In the episode "The Crying Dame", Lily is very sad because she misses her favourite toy, so when her big sister Leni tries to feed her, she just pushes the food away.
  • Played with in "House of Lies". Lisa installs lie-detecting cameras around the house to try to reduce the family's habit of lying to each other. When everyone finds out the truth about each other, Lynn Jr. leaves the table with her bowl of cereal^note Lynn Sr. served cereal for dinner that night because the family didn't like his cabbage and fish sauce casserole the night before, claiming she lost her appetite. One of the cameras tells Lynn Jr. she's lying and that she still has her appetite.
• Madeline:
  • In Madeline in London, as in the book, Pepito is so depressed about having to move to London and leave Madeline and friends behind that he barely eats until his parents arrange for Miss Clavel and the girls to come and visit.
  • In Madeline and the Toy Factory, the morning after Madeline's adventure pretending to be a doll in little crippled girl Giselle's house, neither Giselle nor Madeline will eat their breakfast. Giselle is too sad about the loss of her wonderful "doll," while Madeline feels too guilty about having tricked her.
• The Simpsons:
  • Referenced briefly in "Flaming Moes" when Homer is sad over Moe's success after taking his drink idea.
    Homer: Marge, I'm too upset to eat. I think I'll go to Moe's. ...D'oh!
  • In Take My Life, Please, Homer is too sad to eat because he discovered that his loss in becoming high school president was rigged.
    Marge: Homie, you're barely eating.
    Bart: Yeah, I can actually see your hands, they're not just a blur.
    Homer: I don't feel much like eating. I'll never know what would've happened if I had been class president.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: In the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode "So Long Sucker", Tails adopts an alien creature from another dimension as a pet, naming him Goobster. At the end of the episode, Sonic reunites Goobster with his parents, and Tails tearfully waves goodbye to him. To cheer Tails up, Sonic offers to take Tails to lunch, but Tails tells him he isn't hungry. Sonic then tells Tails that after lunch, he'll get him another pet (but not an alien this time).
• One Very Special Episode of Static Shock deals with Richie's father Mr. Foley being racist against Black people. Mrs. Foley realizes something is wrong when Richie, ordinarily a Big Eater, is too upset to eat his dinner.

Real Life

• Many people with anxiety report some degree of loss of appetite. People with social anxiety might feel self-conscious about being seen eating in public as well.
• Even without anxiety disorders, it's also common to not feel hungry when nervous or upset.
• People with severe depression will often not eat, sometimes for days at a time.
• People under the influence of stimulant drugs like cocaine or methamphetamine tend to get more irritable, and suppression of appetite is also a common effect. Methamphetamine even used to be sold as an appetite suppressant.

---