Blech! I've had rotten vegetables more delicious than this!
Wes: [referring to their prison rations] Imperial MRRs. Meals Ready to Regurgitate.
Ibitsam: At least the local rodents seem uninterested in them.
Wes: Right. So we have no bait for fresh meat.
Ibitsam: At least the local rodents seem uninterested in them.
Wes: Right. So we have no bait for fresh meat.
— X-Wing Rogue Squadron, "In the Empire's Service"
This trope usually occurs in a prison, school cafeteria or camp cafeteria. The food that a character is served is so terrible that even the rampant vermin (or some other animal widely considered undesirable) refuse to eat it. Maybe because it's an Indestructible Edible, maybe because it's just that bad-tasting, poorly cooked, or rancid. This is usually used to demonstrate how terrible the food is.
Often the product of a Lethal Chef, and usually in the form of Mystery Meat. Compare Even Beggars Won't Choose It for the non-food variant, as well as Even Evil Has Standards and Even the Dog Is Ashamed. See also Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth, when an Eldritch Abomination turns down a meal of the hero. For other dystopia-like looks at food, see Future Food Is Artificial and Poverty Food. Subtrope of Everyone Has Standards. Sometimes inverted by having only a rat or whatever like it; see Only One Who Likes Spam for that.
Examples:
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Animation
- Happy Friends: In episode 17, Lethal Chef Sweet S. makes some food and a rat actually does try to eat it, but dies as soon as it tastes it.
Anime & Manga
- At one point in Touhou Suzunaan ~ Forbidden Scrollery the Human Village gets hit by a pretty serious rat infestation. Yet Marisa's cottage proves to be such a disaster area of various magical and possibly poisonous items that the rats steer well clear of it as they would probably not last a minute in there.
Comic Books
- A recurring joke in Archie Comics. In one oneshot, a bear steals a picnic basket from the girls. It takes a bite, spits it out, and brings the basket back while pinching its nose, causing Veronica to cry, "Worse news, girls- the bear's bringing it back!" Presumably, Veronica made the food.
- In the Looney Tunes comic book story "Cooking Made Uneasy", Honey Bunny gets offended and storms off when she finds out that Bugs doesn't like her cooking:
Bugs: Just hear me out! Face it, Honey Bun — you are not one of the world's great cooks!
Honey: I am so a good cook!
Bugs: Oh, come on! The mice in your house have to send out for cheese sandwiches! - Tintin: In Tintin and the Picaros, Tintin cooks up a meal laced with an experimental drug from Prof. Calculus to a rebel camp to break them of their alcoholism. Said rebels don't trust him, so Tintin feeds the meal to Snowy. Snowy doesn't want to eat it either (because the drug tastes like Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce), but Tintin forces Snowy to eat it anyhow. The rebels then eat it. Nobody gets sick, and nobody can hold their liquor afterwards. Mission successful.
- V for Vendetta: Evey is served some kind of food in prison which a rat looks at and then passes up.
- An arc in the X-Wing Rogue Squadron comics has Wes and Ibitsam captured and imprisoned together. Even the local rat equivalents won't touch their food, which means they can't use it as bait to catch and eat the rats.
Comic Strips
- In a Beetle Bailey strip, the cook makes a pie during a forest exercise and is optmistic about its sucess as he prepares to serve it, pre-cut. However, when he accidentally drops one slice straight into the path of a group of ants, the ants walk in a circle around it.
- Garfield:
- Garfield has sometimes used Jon's cooking as mouse repellent. Heck, it probably counts as this trope that Garfield himself won't eat some of the things Jon cooks.
- Another version: Garfield says he looked into Jon's closet and saw that two hundred moths committed suicide. Jon is regularly stated to still be a fan of polyester-heavy 70s fashion.
- The "Limited Edition Haulin' Ass and Ammo 'Meals Ready to Eat' Snack Pouches" from Knights of the Dinner Table:
Weird Pete: I bought half a pallet of that crap two years ago... Didn't sell a single pack.. Squirrely wouldn't even touch 'em.note
- In a Mafalda strip, Manolito finds a rat in his family's grocery shop. He prepares a mousetrap, using the shop's own cheese as food bait. Cut to that evening, with the rat in question sniffing experimentally the cheese on the trap. The next morning, Manolito notices the trap still unused and the cheese untouched, but with rat footmarks around it. He follows the footmarks out of the shop, along the street... and leading directly to a pharmacy!
- In a Zits strip, Pierce tosses a piece of junk food he's eating to a pigeon. The pigeon eats it and then throws up. Cue Jeremy commenting "And that's an animal that lives on garbage" and Pierce peering into the packet and musing that maybe he needs to re-examine his dietary habits.
Fan Works
- In Child of the Storm, Hagrid's Rock Cakes are just as bad as in canon — Diana (a young Wonder Woman with the attendant indestructibility) barely manages to eat one before "with a slightly wan smile" politely refusing more, while the narration remarks that they "went down the throat like a rockslide, sat on the stomach like a cannonball, and had the taste to match." However, to everyone else's silent astonishment, Uhtred (a teenage Asgardian) wolfs them down, including all the ones others slip to him, and enthusiastically pronounces them to be delicious.
- In The Civilian Assistant
, Sam Vimes acidly remarks to Mr. Bourneville-Cadbury, owner of one of Ankh-Morpork's largest chocolate factories, on the spectacularly horrible quality of his product, which made his wife sick. Vetinari, presiding over the meeting, comments in passing that the sentient rats living in the Palace utterly hate said chocolates, and a local ratcatcher swears by them to kill less finicky pests.
- In Disney Villain Island, Ratigan refuses to eat Chef's food, calling it disgusting. Hades responds by stating that "If the rat ain't eating it, I sure as Tartarus ain't eatin' it."
- Fruit of Madness: The first thing that indicates something is very wrong with the Argentinosaurus corpses is the complete lack of scavenging animals around them, something that Chopper takes note of in his warning to the Straw Hats to not touch the dead sauropods. Yamato notes that Wano had something similar with the corpses of animals poisoned by the pollutants from Kaido's weapon factories, as they became so toxic that no one dared eat them.
- Played with in Hope for the Heartless: It's shown a fortnight following the demise of the Mad Pack wolves that other than flies, maggots and gnats, no scavenger has touched the meat of the wolves driven murderously insane by a disease similar to rabies.
- Somnium: Maleficent was so evil that flies won't even go near her corpse.
- Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse: The most successful dish in Ukyō's attempt to prepare a Masochist's Meal is a local equivalent to hongeo-hoe — a sashimi-like Korean dish made of skate fermented in its own bile and urine. Miriam (a tiger shark fishgirl who has been seen gnawing on cannonballs) is repulsed by the smell and how it's made, Kodachi (who admits to enjoying herb-crumbed lamb's brains) recoils from the smell, Ukyō herself nearly throws up after taking one mouthful and quickly pushes it away, and Shampoo (who is seen happily slurping up roast snakes like noodles) refuses to even try and touch it.
Films — Animated
- In Ratatouille, Linguini's attempt at cooking soup causes Rémy, a rat with a heightened sense of smell, to nearly vomit after catching a whiff of it, in spite of rats having no gag reflex.
- In The Triplets of Belleville, Madame Souza warily regards the frog stew the eponymous triplets have made, and even Bruno, the obese dog shown so far to eat anything, sniffs it and then backs away. This is mostly due, however, to the fact that one of the frogs in his serving is still alive and starts to kick.
Films — Live-Action
- In the 1925 silent film The Battleship Potemkin, the Russian sailors revolt over being served maggot-infested meat and declare, "Even a dog won't eat this!" The ship's "doctor" tries the opposite to disprove them, claiming that the presence of so many maggots means at least the flies are still eating it, meaning the meat is still perfectly healthy for humans.
- There's a scene in Bloodsport (1988) where the two American agents sent to bring Frank back to the US are eating in a Hong Kong restaurant, exclaiming about how good the food is. Later in the scene, however, their liaison from Hong Kong refuses to eat at that restaurant, and when they go to leave they throw some meat to a stray dog that has been watching them. The dog reacts by just whimpering and turning away.
- Bone Tomahawk: Morbid example. The Troglodytes are completely degenerate Frazetta Man types who savagely kill, eat and rape humans and even their own mothers but for some reason, they draw the line at eating the black stable-hand they murder.
- In the Blue Collar Comedy Tour stand-up comedy movie, comedian Ron White says his wife was such a bad cook that he tried to feed it to his dog and it started licking its butt. His wife asks "What's he doing?" and he responded, "It looks like he's trying to get the taste out of his mouth!"
- In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a roach backs away from the "cursed" piece of moldy cheese in the playground at Greg's school.
- In Good Burger the heroes start to suspect their competition is up to something unethical when they toss a Mondo Burger to a dog and it refuses to touch it.
- While at Momma Lucy's, David, from Mr and Mrs Smith, is concerned that the cat won't eat the soup they're eating.
David Smith: I'd give five bucks to see that cat take a sip of that soup.
- Riddick: Riddick opens up an MRE, tastes it, then throws it to his tamed hyena/jackal thing. The "dog" sniffs it once, then turns around and pees on it.
- In The Road to Wellville, a group of somewhat shady businessmen try to produce a new brand of cornflakes, in competition with the very John Kellogg. Since their... products are anything but tasty, they feed them to some pigs. Who won't eat it either.
- The Stone Tape. The strange noises in castle are said to be rats, but one character notes that there are still cans of spam left over from the war that would have been chewed open if that were the case.
- In Toys, Robin Williams' character jokes that he once experimented by putting a pile of sugar and a pile of artificial sweetener on the sidewalk. In short order, ants had formed a line to collect the sugar, while the other pile had barricades and a traffic-control crew.
- A rare Played for Drama example in V for Vendetta: When captured by the government, Evey is placed in a facility for political prisoners. When given her "meal", a rat comes out of the wall and investigates the food, but quickly runs back into its hole without taking a bite: rather than be used for comedic effect, the moment underlines just how dire Evey's circumstances are.
Jokes
- An old schoolyard joke goes that the food in the cafeteria is so bad, the flies need medical attention.
- In one episode of Gordon Ramsay, though it's meant to be serious as Ramsay cannot stand bad food, the way he said that even if the food is given to a mannequin for free but refuses makes it funny.
- One old joke goes that a nuclear holocaust wipes out everything except for rats, roaches and enough fruitcake for all. They starve to death.
- A doctor converses with a researcher, who tells the doctor that the researchers have switched from rats to lawyers in their experiments. The doctor inquires as to why. The researcher replies: "Firstly, the lab assistants don't get so attached to them, secondly, lawyers are more plentiful, and thirdly, there are some things even a rat won't do."
Literature
- According to The Berenstain Bears Spend Too Much Vacation, the berries the Bear family ate at the run-down campground were so sour "that even the birds puckered!"
- In Bravelands, this is a more spiritual example. The vultures in the Bravelands usually observe the carcass of a killed animal before eating it, to see if the animal was killed according to the Code or not. If the dead animal was killed by a predator following the Code, they eat. If not, the vultures won't eat it, instead taking its bones to the Great Mother to read. Speaking of the Great Mother, they won't even eat her carcass out of respect once she's murdered by Stinger and Stronghide.
- The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness: When the murderous bear possessed by a demon kills various animals during the course of Wolf Brother, all the carcasses it leaves behind are left untouched by scavengers.
- Discworld:
- In Making Money, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler asks Mr. Lipwig for a business loan, and brings along samples of the food he sells from his cart. Lipwig's dog Mr. Fusspot is offered a sausage, which he promptly tries to bury under the carpet. When Mr. Bent points this out, Lipwig retorts that Dibbler's ability to get people to eat what dogs won't is a testament to his business skill.
- In The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, rats often remind one another that the "green wobbly bit" is something to be avoided when eating one another.
- In The Truth, the same Dibbler encounters two customers who want a truly awful sausage inna bun, and he shifts an internal gear into reverse as he describes their contents, including the tidbit that you won't find any rat in them, because rats won't go near the place they are made (with the tasteful detail that when a man's thumb got cut off they didn't even stop the grinder — one hopes he was exaggerating).
- There's Dwarf Bread, a parody of Lembas Bread: The main point of packing it down as rations is so you know that, as long as you have Dwarf Bread to look forward to, almost everything else becomes a better alternative for food. Including roots, berries, moss, small rocks, or your own legs. Dwarfs probably wish it could attract rats, rats being a staple of their diet, but the best way to catch rats with Dwarf Bread probably involves throwing it at them.
- In Feet of Clay, rats are described as sometimes breaking into the Dwarf Bread Museum, losing most of their teeth in the process. Cats often hang around, as the rats are a bit stunned after taking a bite of what is basically a slab of semi-edible concrete.
- In Witches Abroad, it's described that the best way to eat dwarf bread is to soak it in a bucket of water for a week then eat the bucket.
- The Discworld Almanak says that leeks will survive "pigeon, rook, rabbit and slug, the reason being, nothing else in Creation wants to eat the damn things".
- The hero of Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. series often justifies his distaste for Morley Dotes' vegetarian restaurant menu with the argument that pigs, which will otherwise eat just about anything, won't touch green peppers or cattail hearts.
- In the children's book Georgie by Robert Bright, the only house in the village that doesn't have a resident ghost is Mr. Gloams' mansion, because even ghosts are frightened by the crotchety old man.
- In Harry Potter, Hagrid's Rock Cakes are a kind of fruit cake and infamously inedible, with the narration describing them as being exactly like eating rocks (in 6th year, a hungry Harry unwisely grabs one immediately... then stops after hearing 'an ominous cracking noise from one of his back teeth'), and Harry, Ron, and Hermione only eat them in small quantities because they don't want to tell Hagrid how bad they are and thus hurt his feelings.
- In the second Rivers of London urban fantasy novel, Molly's eggs Benedict turns out so badly that Toby the dog, when offered a sample, whimpers and hides under the breakfast table.
- In A Song of Ice and Fire, Gregor Clegane is injured by a spear coated in a poison created to draw out its victim's suffering as long as humanly possible before they die. As his wounds continue to rot and mortify, leaving him in agony, even maggots will not touch his rotting flesh, and the poison seeps into his blood, killing any leeches that try to feed. Don't feel too bad for him, though.
- The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z explain that zombies are so dangerous and indestructible because carrion, flies, bacteria — everything that feeds on dead flesh — won't touch zombie flesh.
Live-Action TV
- Jerry Dean of American Hoggers had been trying to make some wild hog sausage. He tried some and then tried to feed it to one of his hunting dogs. The dog tasted it and ran off.
- Once in The Andy Griffith Show, Barney attempts to swat at a fly that landed on one of Aunt Bea's infamous pickles, only to find he's too late. The pickle killed it.
- On Friends, during an episode where Phoebe, Joey, and Rachel drive to where Phoebe's bio-dad supposedly lives, they are trapped in their car by a vicious yapper dog. In a bid to distract it, Rachel throws a meat sandwich Joey brought with him as a way to distract the mutt. The dog takes one sniff, recoils away from the food, and goes back to barking at them. Rachel promptly spells out this trope.
Rachel: Okay, Joey, the dog will lick himself but he will not touch your sandwich. What does that tell you?
- Full House. In the episode "Kissing Cousins," Jesse's Greek cousin, Starvos, orders himself a pizza topped with double feta cheese and lamb guts, which gives out quite a strong smell. Even the family dog, Comet, won't touch it as he takes one smell of it and runs out of the room.
- The InBESTigators: A variation in "The Case of the Fishy Fundraiser", the spoiled lemonade is so bad that even Maudie, whose favorite food is peanut butter/salmon sandwiches, thinks it's revolting.
- Kitchen Nightmares: In the episode on The Old Neighborhood, while trying to eat a barbecue shrimp, Gordon notes to the waitress serving him that the shrimp is so bad a fly is more content to bug him than to try for his shrimp.
- In an episode of Last Week Tonight on dollar stores, specifically Dollar General, in a part about rodent infestations in the warehouses, an employee is shown trying to feed a rat a Pringles-type chip, only for the rat to not even want it.
- In "Convalescence" of Murdoch Mysteries, Detective Murdoch complains about his food. His landlady is a Lethal Chef, but her stand-in seems to be an even worse cook. Even a mouse will not eat the food she brought to Murdoch. He later finds a dead mouse (this one was probably very hungry), and he realizes that his meals are being poisoned.
- Played with on Star Trek: The Next Generation. A running joke is that there are certain foods so revolting no being will ever eat them. Except Worf, who thinks it's delicious.
Music
- "Syrup" by Aesop Rock, starts with the lines...
The dirty dishes are becoming self-aware,
Even the roaches like "I wouldn't raise my children here." - The German folksong Es, es, es und es about a journeyman's reasons to leave town contains the line "Ihr Essen war so zugericht', manchmal fra?en's selbst die Schweine nicht" ("her food was prepared in a way that sometimes even the pigs wouldn't eat it").
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40,000: Tyranids are a voracious Horde of Alien Locusts that eats everything on a planet, even the soil, stripping it to a bare rock. The only planets they refuse to eat are Necron tomb worlds, which feel like void in the Warp to them (and are inherently devoid of biomass, as the Necrons' first reaction to finding life on their doorstep is removing it to the last bacterium).
Urban Legends
- An urban legend states that flies won't touch margarine because it's "one molecule away from plastic." (Also a case of Artistic License – Chemistry — chemical structure is almost as important to a compound's physical properties as its composition. Two molecules might contain exactly the same atoms but be arranged in a different way and consequently have wildly different behavior (melting/boiling point, density, toxicity...). The statement that "margarine is (chemically similar to) plastic" is effectively meaningless.) Cracked.com once pointed out that the logic behind this claim is like saying that a farm is a bad thing because it's one letter away from a fart.
- An old urban legend had it that a starving coyote wouldn't eat a dead Mexican, because the residue of a lifetime of chili peppers would burn the creature's mouth. This is utter biological nonsense, but gullible gringo tourists were regularly fooled by this equivalent of "free-range haggis" or "drop bears." A variation that says that vultures won't touch a dead Mexican makes even less sense: peppers don't burn birds in the first place.Scientific aside
Video Games
- Bravely Default has a short party chat with Edea Lee late-game. Sage Yulyana has been pestering her to cook something every time they visit, on the grounds of "a young lady's cooking is better, and Agnès, given her upbringing, couldn't very well boil water". He'd probably be better off with unboiled water.
Edea: He [Yulyana] fed it to a dog when I wasn't looking!
Tiz: Actually, that dog left it for a cat to eat.
Agnès: Yes, and then that cat left it to a crow. - Cookies: If the player tries to give brownie mix to the rats, their king will reject it, calling "rubbish" they cannot eat.
- One section of the manual/copy protection in Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals used this chart to rate restaurants:
1 Star: My dog wouldn't eat here
2 Stars: My dog would eat here, but I wouldn't
3 Stars: My dog and I eat here regularly
4 Stars: This place is too classy to bring my dog
5 Stars: Top notch - Rations from the Metal Gear franchise are notorious for their taste. In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Naked Snake admits he'd take a rotten snake any day over Russian rations. He and EVA complain about the taste when consuming one and if you toss one to the guard dogs, they won't even touch it. According to Roy Campbell in Metal Gear Solid 4, French rations are consider to be the best which contains sweets and American ones to be the worst. It doesn't help that Rose's cooking is considered to be even worse than that: in that conversation, she makes note that Roy has almost never stopped talking about those French rations, and according to Raiden he would prefer rations to Rose's food.
- At one point shortly after Koromaru (the dog) joins in Persona 3, there's a small moment in the dorm lounge (it can be seen around 8/15 to 8/24) where Yukari, having screwed up making her dinner, tries to feed the leftovers to him. Koromaru wants nothing to do with them. Junpei, of course, thinks it's hilarious.
Junpei: AHHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's awesome! He won't eat it!
- There's also a scene in Fuuka's Social Link, where she tries to give some of her food to a stray cat. It runs away.
- An interesting variation in Super Mario Bros. with Wario, who has Eternally Pearly-White Teeth despite being a Fat Slob with questionable hygiene. Apparently, this is because he eats so much garlic that bacteria refuses to settle in his mouth.
Webcomics
- Freefall variation: A cockroach does eat from Sam's plate in The Golden Trough, but dies immediately afterwards.
- One Curtailed comic where Fox and Mandy went camping showed some opossums digging through their backpack of MREs and tossing them aside.
- The original run of You Damn Kid had the author recount complaining about a meal his mother made, and she responded with the stock phrase "Starving children in China would beg to have it!" When the family briefly took in a Chinese refugee, though, the author was gleeful to discover that even that kid hated the meal.
Web Videos
- Counter Monkey: The Peter Piper Pizza that Noah found in the game store bathroom. Despite being in there for over a month, it was perfectly pristine. Even bacteria wouldn't touch it.
- Stuart Ashen once prepared a microwavable pizza that looked distinctly unpalatable. In The Stinger, he tried to feed it to his pet poodle, who wouldn't eat it.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: When transfats are banned in Langley Falls, it quickly makes nearly all food within the town inedible. One of the CIA agents at Stan's office shoots himself rather than eat his lunch.
- In the Amphibia episode "Lily Pad Thai", we see the chef of the local Greasy Spoon, Stumpy, serves putrid slop so disgusting that an opossum-like creature that crawls up on the table eats a mouthful and immediately horks it back up (and this is followed by a shot of a frog skeleton holding a spoon with a bowl of slop in front of it).
- In an Animaniacs skit that parodies Les Misérables, the innkeeper and Keeper of the Cats (the skit's answer to Monsieur Thernardier) makes pies that are so bad, even the Inspector's dog is disgusted by them. (The inspector tells him, off the record, that with the proper seasoning, cats can be rather tasty; not coincidentally, Fantine and Valjean are represented by Rita and Runt, respectively, in the skit.)
- In an episode of Arthur, the title character and his little sister D.W. complain to themselves about their grandma's cooking. D.W. attempts to give some olive-loaf to Pal, their dog. He refuses it and D.W. responds with "That dog's not as dumb as he looks."
- The Brandy & Mr. Whiskers episode "A Tree Huggin' Bunny" has Mr. Whiskers chaining himself to a rare tree for days that he gains a bad body odor due to not washing and flies buzz around him, but the flies find his stench unbearable even for them and leave.
Fly 1: You know, I'll eat a lot of stinky stuff. But this? This is killing me!
Fly 2: You've said it! - In the Clarence episode "Jeff Wins", a flashback to one of Jeff's state fair cooking contest freak-outs shows him tossing his entry to the pigs in a nearby pen, who then throw it back.
- In the DC Super Hero Girls (2019) short "#SofaSoGood", a rat tries to steal a pizza, but rejects it after Barbara yells that it has pineapples on it.
- The Deep (2015): A Running Gag in "Lonesome Jim" involves a strain of kelp Will has been breeding as a new foodstuff. At the end of the episode, Ant offers a strand to the tortoise Lonesome Jim, who turns up his nose at it.
- In one episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Bloo makes way too many cookies to the point where they're getting nasty. A man drops one of the cookies on the ground. A dog is then shown trying to sniff it, but gets disgusted by it.
- Garfield and Friends:
- In "Good Mousekeeping" Garfield combats a rodent infestation by serving them Jon's latest experimental dish. They eat a few bites before deciding that it's too awful for them and leave. It also counts as this for Garfield himself since he won't eat it, either, and he and Odie end up joining the mice in the alley for scraps.
Floyd the mouse: I knew you cats were sneaky, but I never thought you'd stoop to rat poison!
- In "Cabin Fever", Jon takes Garfield and Odie to a cabin for the weekend, and the two pets are trapped in it with no food during a blizzard. Garfield becomes hungry waiting for Jon to return and resorts to eating pictures of food from a cookbook he finds. The episode ends with Jon returning to the cabin to make Garfield his special southern fried pig's liver with chocolate sauce. Upon hearing this, Garfield goes back to the cookbook and continues to eat pictures of food from it, finding them more appetizing.
- In several episodes, people who have HORRIBLE cooking are demonstrated how horrible their cooking is by having even Garfield refuse to eat them. An example being Papa Plastique's pizza, which is so inedible as to seem to be made of plastic.
- In "Good Mousekeeping" Garfield combats a rodent infestation by serving them Jon's latest experimental dish. They eat a few bites before deciding that it's too awful for them and leave. It also counts as this for Garfield himself since he won't eat it, either, and he and Odie end up joining the mice in the alley for scraps.
- In the Harvey Street Kids episode "Trade Wreck", Melvin dyes a piece of sponge cake red to pass it off as red velvet at the kids' trading post. Two of the local raccoons put the cake in their mouths, only to immediately take it back out and throw it at Melvin.
- Looney Tunes: In one cartoon, Pepé Le Pew finally realizes he smells bad when a sewer rat climbs out of a manhole, takes a sniff, and keels over in his wake.
- In the Madeline episode "Madeline at Cooking School," when the girls make their first, horrific attempt at preparing lunch, Madeline tries to slip her sandwich to her two mouse friends, but they hate it just as much as she does, and then run away in terror when the other girls do the same.
- In an episode of Monsters vs. Aliens, Sqweep tries to make food for Vornicarn, but he won't eat it. Extreme Omnivore B.O.B. has a taste, and is so disgusted he tears off his own tongue and tosses it in the trash.
- Perhaps a literal example in the Muppet Babies episode, "Meatball Mayhem"; when the babies dislike the Swedish Chef's meatballs, they try to get rid of them by offering them to some of their other friends, one of which is Rizzo. After eating one meatball, Rizzo says, "No, thanks!", and shuts the door on the babies.
- In the Ozzy & Drix episode "Gas of Doom", Hector did a science project on what cafeteria food his dog wouldn't touch. Turned out to be 'all of it'.
- Played for Horror in Primal in the episode "Plague of Madness". The corpses of creatures infected by or killed by victims of the titular plague give off such an air of wrongness that even the flies won't touch them. Fang, a T. rex who usually doesn't care about what she eats, approaches one such corpse and recoils.
- In The Ren & Stimpy Show episode "Ren's Toothache", Ren's halitosis becomes so foul that even the Tooth Beaver and the flies can't stand it.
- In an episode of Rugrats, Susie's homemade Reptar bar snacks are so bad even Spike ran away after smelling one.
- The Secret Saturdays: Even Komodo spits out the hair sandwich Drew makes Doc in "The Vengeance of Hibagon".
- The Simpsons:
- In a non-animal example, the episode with the sugar ban saw the police burning every bit of candy in Springfield. When they throw the Butterfingers bars into the fire, they get thrown right back out. It's a popular misconception that the show lost their sponsor for that joke. Rather, it's the other way around: the contract was already over, and the show wanted the final word.
Chief Wiggum: Even the fire won't take them.
- In a non-food example, when Bart and Milhouse are put in charge of Comic Book Guy's shop while he's unable to work, Milhouse ends up buying several boxes of a comic named "Biclops" about a superpowered nerd with glasses. It's a huge flop and Bart complains that not even the birds want them for their nests. On cue, an angered bird flies inside with an issue of the comic, tears it to shreds and flies away.
- Another non-food example: the episode where George H. W. Bush moves in across from the Simpsons starts out with Homer trying to sell his stuff to other people on the block. Nothing is purchased, especially not a denim jacket with "DISCO STU" embroidered on it (he was trying to write "disco stud" but he ran out of room). A character named Disco Stu was even invented in this episode just so he could look at the jacket and decide not to buy it.
- In a non-animal example, the episode with the sugar ban saw the police burning every bit of candy in Springfield. When they throw the Butterfingers bars into the fire, they get thrown right back out. It's a popular misconception that the show lost their sponsor for that joke. Rather, it's the other way around: the contract was already over, and the show wanted the final word.
- In Sonic Boom, Meh Burger's "food" is so terrible that wild animals won't eat it, according to Dave the Intern in the episode, "Og Man Out".
Sonic: Whoa! What happened here? Looks like a wild animal got in!
Dave: Nah, we've run tests. Animals won't eat this stuff. - In an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, it is shown that Plankton's last customer was a rat who died after eating his food. What a rat was doing Under the Sea is anyone's guess.
Real Life
- Chocolate and caffeine are lethal to the majority of animal species, though rats and mice can metabolize the theobromine present in the former at a rate approaching humans.
- Although rats are omnivorous and can consume nearly anything humans do, they dislike the taste of apples and won't eat them unless they're exceptionally hungry.
- Some sugar substitutes aren't tasty for insects. Consequently, vermin can ignore "sweet" products, which naturally begs for jokes along the line of "flies scornfully turn away from X".
- The Japanese have a nice, succinct little word for this trope as it applies to fish: nekomatagi, which loosely translated means "even the cat won't touch it".
- As the story goes, natto was discovered when horse feed had gone so bad the horses wouldn't eat it anymore. For those who don't know what natto is, imagine if you left a bowl of soy beans to rot—er, ferment until you have something that is half-bean, half-foul-smelling-paste.
- In a morbid offshoot of this trope, some diseases (for instance, a historic plague in Athens) are sufficiently unpleasant that vultures won't eat the victims, which is saying a lot since vultures are normally able to eat most carrion without any ill effects, suggesting that they are able to quite adeptly discern when something's too dangerous by their standards.
- Some genetic modifications aim at averting vermin from crops (e.g. the potato and the Colorado potato beetle). Some people regard this as an argument against eating said crops themselves.
- Even cockroaches won't go near a meth lab.note
- In general, any leaf, stem, or root with a strong taste tastes that way to dissuade consumption. For example, very few animals will touch mint. The main reason that humans can stomach mint or most spices is because we usually eat at most one spoonful with our entire meal, as opposed to trying to eat half a kilogram of it all at once. A dash of chili pepper in your dinner is tasty. A whole bowl full of raw habanero is just plain masochistic.
- Most insects avoid water pepper because of its very spicy and pungent flavour. However, this plant is valued in Japan, where it's ground down with some rice and a little bit of vinegar to make a sauce that goes very well with grilled freshwater fish.
- Unlike most products made with flour, Passover matzah never spoils (as long as it stays dry) because even mold spores won't eat it. Likewise, hardtack or sea biscuit. It'll keep forever as long as it's kept dry, but calling it bland is being very charitable.
- Plastics. Just about anything organic can be consumed by bacteria, fungi, or a combination thereof. Non-degradable plastics are a problem because no microorganisms have gotten around to figuring out how to digest the stuff. Bacteria have been discovered that can eat nylon, or at least some of the byproducts from its manufacture.
- During the Cold War, at least one of the superpowers used dead rats to mark dead drops. Animals (like cats) ate the rats. So they used hot sauce to prevent them from eating the dead rats, and it worked.
- Fish sauce. It's so loaded with salt and vinegar, that once the fermentation process needed to make it is complete, bacteria simply don't want a piece of that action. Despite being made with anchovies, it does not need to be refrigerated, even after it's been opened.
- Murtsovka was a particular version of pemmican, developed by the Siberian hunters explicitly as an emergency ration. It consisted of bear tallow mixed with breadcrumbs and dried berries and air-dried until the fat became rancid. This allowed it to keep almost indefinitely without further spoilage, and the terrible, bitter taste of the whole thing deterred everyone from eating it before the things became truly dire.
- "Squirrel-proof" birdseed, which is made by effectively soaking the seeds in capsaicin from chili peppers. Birds have taste receptors that aren't sensitive to the chemicalnote so the seed tastes fine to them, but it is firey hot to squirrels and rodents which discourages them from eating it. While they can adapt to it, they're not likely to if there's other food available elsewhere.
- The Canadian Armed Forces has its ration packs known as IMPs, or Individual Meal Packs, which are more or less the equivalent to the American MRE. For the most part they range from good to at least edible, and yet...
- Soldiers on deployment in Afghanistan were infamously repulsed to discover that local stray dogs wouldn't touch certain kinds of IMPs, such as the alleged "Omelette" which tasted so bad it's long-since been discontinued. Yes, street dogs would rather go hungry than eat those god-forsaken things.
- Dear God, the "Poutine". When Canadians won't eat poutine, you know there's a problem. This ration pack quite literally looks, smells, and tastes like rotting potatoes covered in slugs, and nobody is willing to eat these ones. They are so bad that insects and rodents won't go near them when thrown out, units tend to order extra IMP boxes so there'll be enough spares that nobody has to eat the "Poutine", and these rations are actually fed to soldiers as punishments for misbehavior.
- Some species of mammals are known for having extremely strong, unpleasant tastes, like the African bushbuck or the North American pronghorn. As a consequence, predators tend to avoid attacking them unless no other game is available.
