Image Courtesy from Stoutlyn
Averell: What do you call this delicious crust around the frijoles?
Emilio Espuelas: It's called a terracotta bowl, amigo...
Emilio Espuelas: It's called a terracotta bowl, amigo...
A character will eat not only a chocolate bar, but the wrapper as well; not only an egg, but the shell with it; and takes literally the phrase "eat a dish of food". A variation is eating the container instead of the food.
This can be done to show that a character is extremely hungry, is an Extreme Omnivore or a Paste Eater, or for the Rule of Funny. The actual eating of the "food" should be shown: in many situations, the practicalities of preparing food are often handwaved; such as skinning and cooking meat, peeling vegetables, and so on. For example, if a character in a video game eats a chicken whole, it only counts if they are actually seen eating it, or if it is discussed. Merely selecting "eat chicken" in a game would not be an example.
With food that comes in edible "containers", such as ice cream cones, bread bowls for soup, or chocolate shot glasses for liquors, these would only be an example if eating these is unexpected, or funny. There is more information about edible tableware
, and also the trencher: tableware made from stale bread.
Compare Ate It All, in which one person eats the food intended for lots of people. Compare also Cut a Slice, Take the Rest. A Madness-Induced Omnivore may do this as well. Not to be confused with Ate the Spoon, in which the food eats the spoon.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Played with in an early-1970s McDonaldland commercial. Two anthropomorphic wastebaskets sing a jingle about how they enjoy eating the cups, napkins, etc. from McDonald's meals.
Anime & Manga
- Kirby: Right Back at Ya!: In the first episode "Kirby Comes To Cappy Town", the town holds a welcoming dinner for Kirby, but it ends with Kirby using his Vacuum Mouth to eat the entire table's worth of food, plates, utensils, drink glasses, tablecloth, and all, in seconds, much to the bewilderment of the townsfolk. He does at least have the courtesy to spit out the inedible stuff afterwards, though.
- One Piece: After Luffy wakes from his gruelling battle with Crocodile at the tail-end of the Alabasta Arc, he is offered a large cart of fruit to stave off his insane hunger. Not only does Luffy swallow every single crumb in about three animation frames, but he ends up inadvertently eating the boxes that some of the fruit came in.
Comic Books
- Lucky Luke: In "Tortillas for the Daltons", the Daltons get their first taste of Mexican cuisine:
Averell: What do you call this delicious crust around the frijoles?
Emilio Espuelas: It's called a terracotta bowl, amigo...
Comic Strips
- One Gnasher and Gnipper strip in The Beano involves the two dogs eating their bowls of dog food, including the bowls. Later, they try to hide after getting in trouble for it, but they get pulled out of their hiding place by their owner Dennis's parents using a magnet. The bowls were metal, and are magnetic.
- Garfield:
- In the February 18, 1997 strip, Garfield gets so hungry while being forced on a diet that he eats the mug his coffee was poured in.
- Implied to be the case in the February 09, 1990 strip, when Jon asks Garfield about a missing lasagna, and then asks where the pan it was in went.
- In the May 26, 1990 strip, Garfield pats his stomach in satisfaction after devouring his food, only to be surprised when it makes a "tonk tonk tonk" sound. The next panel zooms out to show that his stomach has taken the shape of his food bowl.
- Herman: One strip has a woman asking her husband if he's really sure that the pizza he ate is what gave him indigestion. She is shown looking at a triangular slice missing not just from the pizza, but also the pizza box and the table as well.
Fan Works
- In Chapter 6 of The Great Alicorn Hunt, Discord ate seven hors d'oeuvre trays. Not the hors d'oeuvres, the trays. He complains the sterling silver wasn't filling.
- Harry Is A Dragon, And That's Okay: Harry routinely eats and enjoys packaging and occasionally even dishes along with the food, which contributed to him not minding cooking for the Dursleys; it was easier that way for him to eat everything without being noticed. Dean Thomas is astounded that he could stomach a snack from a train catering carriage; Harry doesn't mention that he also ate the wrapper, and "It had been a toss-up as to which had tasted better." Once they're at Hogwarts, Dean continues to stare as Harry eats a chicken leg including the bone, then a pot pie in a china dish.
- Intergalactic Illness: When Lala catches a cold, due to her Bizarre Alien Biology, her appetite increases. When she has breakfast at the start of the story, she devours a bowl of rice, dish and all.
- If Wishes Were Ponies...: When Discord introduces himself to the Weasley family, Harry tries to calm things down by offering him a strawberry jam sandwich. Discord eats the sandwich and the plate. While this is normal behavior for him, it was made more horrifying for the Weasleys because Discord had disguised himself as a human.
- Our Week Off Together!: King throws a bottle of elixir into Eda's mouth while she was transformed into The Owl-Beast and she transforms back but also starts hacking her lungs out.
Eda: Gack! Ugh! Did I just swallow a whole bottle again? Cough, oh by Titan, I am not looking forward to it coming back out...
- Taylor Varga: The Varga can eat and digest virtually any physical substance, and even the lesser Family members can digest anything vaguely organic. As such, they will often eat entire wrapped hamburgers or the like, packaging and all, in a single bite.
- Thieves Can Be Heroes!: Downplayed by Ann Takamaki. Her Quirk gives her teeth superhuman strength and cutting power. She's never swallowed any dishes or utensils, but she's accidentally bitten through countless sets of chopsticks and at least four forks in her life.
- This Bites!: Luffy has unintentionally eaten so many plates in his life that he can tell the difference between porcelain and china based on taste. He insists the former tastes better.
Film — Animated
- Despicable Me 2: In a flashback, El Macho orders a drink and after he fills it with snake venom, he throws the glass in his mouth and chews it up.
- Fun and Fancy Free: In Mickey and the Beanstalk, Donald Duck is a starving peasant who, in a fit of hunger-fueled rage, puts some cutlery between two plates tries eating them like a sandwich before Mickey and Goofy restrain him.
- Hercules (1997): When Hercules meets Philoctetes, Phil picks up a dish of grapes left behind by the nymphs he was watching. He then throws away the grapes and eats the dish like it was a piece of fruit (the joke being he's half-goat).
Film — Live-Action
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Augustus Gloop takes a bite of a chocolate bar to find there's something unusual in it. He looks back in his hands and finds that he's bitten into the Golden Ticket that was hiding behind the chocolate.
- In the Navy: After seeing Pomeroy eating a banana skin, Smokey tells him to try the delicious native food and tells him to "Taste that dish". Pomeroy takes him literally and takes a bite out of the bowl.
- A Night in Casablanca: After drinking Kornblow's coffee, Rusty then proceeds to eat the cup and saucer.
- Room Service (1938): When Christine arrives at Miller's hotel room with a bag of sandwiches, Faker pulls out a sandwich, opens the wrapper to check what's on it, wraps it back up and proceeds to chow down.
- Tales from Muppetland: The Frog Prince: Attempted by Sweetums when Taminella gives him Robin to eat. Sweetums tries to eat the frog while he's still inside the cage.
Taminella: [bonks Sweetums on the head with her cane] You eat the frog, not the cage, fat head!
Sweetums: Ooohh, Fat Head sorry. Sorry, sorry. - Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:
- Downplayed, when Willy Wonka picks a cup and saucer from a bush in the Chocolate Room, drinks the contents, then takes a bite out of the cup, emphasising that everything in the room is edible.
- Discussed in the lyrics to "The Candy Man":
The candy man makes everything he bakes
Satisfying and delicious.
Talk about your childhood wishes.
You can even eat the dishes!
Literature
- Adrian Mole: In Growing Pains, Adrian runs away with the dog, and buys the dog a Creme egg. The dog is so hungry that it eats the silver paper as well. Adrian hopes that the dog will not need to see the vet.
- The Aeneid: The Harpy Celaeno curses Aeneas and his crew to not reach their destination until they get so hungry they eat their tables (dishes were not common in old Troy), apparently hinting at this trope. It is subject to a Prophecy Twist when the crew reaches Italy and are served toppings on a flatbread, a form of proto-pizza, with the edible flatbread counting as a table for the purpose of the curse.
- Animorphs: When the Animorphs take Ax to see a movie, he eats the popcorn they give him — and then the cardboard box too.
- Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill: The Cute Slime Mook Sui is intelligent but an Extreme Omnivore, so when it joins the protagonist, he has to teach it not to eat the dishes along with the food. However, it's happy to eat disposable packaging.
- Mr. Men: Mr Silly, being Mr Silly, eats not only eggs but the shells as well.
- In Monday Begins on Saturday, the model of a perpetually hungry man eats the container once it's done with the food.
- October Daye: The Luidaeg's Bizarre Taste in Food extends to eating burritos with the foil still on. As The Dreaded Sea Witch from faerie legend, her body can definitely handle it.
- In the Retief story "The Brass God" the Terran diplomats have arranged a diplomatic luncheon for the ruler of an alien planet. When he turns up, he throws away the sandwiches and starts eating the plate, having heard a lot about Terran dishes. He decides they're not bad and offers another plate to Retief.
“No thanks, I filled up on a beer bottle just before Your Arrogance arrived,” Retief countered. “Try the dinner plates. They’re said to be an epicure’s delight.”
- Return of the Runebound Professor: Lee can and does eat just about anything, and somehow isn't harmed by it at all, even when she swipes Jalen's (glass) bottle of orange juice and eats the whole thing including the cork. Presumably it's a feature of being a gluttony demon.
Lee: I like orange juice. It's crunchy.
- The Very Fat Cat: The titular cat eats all the gruel that an old woman prepares, and the pot too. When the woman asks what has happened to the gruel, the cat tells her. He then proceeds to eat the old woman too, and everyone he meets, who asks him why he is so fat.
- Two lines in the second verse of Lewis Carroll's poem 'Tis the Voice of the Lobster describe an owl eating the dish after a panther has eaten the pie that was on it:
The Panther took pie-crust, & gravy, & meat,
While the Owl got the dish as his share of the treat.
Live-Action TV
- Horrible Histories: In a "Historical Masterchef" sketch, a Tudor chef shows the judges the Tudor tradition of making plates out of sugar, meaning the dishes are literally edible. Gregg eats several of the sugar plates before he accidentally attempts to eat a normal ceramic plate.
- Judge John Deed: When John's therapist asks him about his earliest memory, he describes giving a toffee to a chimpanzee at the zoo, who unwrapped the toffee, ate the paper, and threw the toffee away.
- Kamen Rider Gavv: The protagonist's monster uncle, Dente Stomach, loves human snack food so much that he doesn't always bother to open the packaging before he puts it in his mouth. He'll down a whole bag of chips in one go, including the bag.
- Subverted in MythBusters. When testing a myth that the cereal box is healthier than the cereal Adam and Jamie fed both to different groups of mice. The box mice resorted to cannibalism to avoid starvation.
- The Orville: In "Old Wounds", the crew finds out that Moclans are Extreme Omnivores with incredibly resilient digestive systems. This inevitably devolves into the crew daring Bortus to eat increasingly inedible objects, including a napkin and a drinking glass.
- Play School: One song about food has the line "I like the skins of them, even the tins of them."
- Sesame Street:
- Cookie Monster, being an Extreme Omnivore, not only eats cookies but also often eats the boxes they came in or the dishes they're served on. Cookie Monster's habit of eating plates is parodied in Episode 2921; when Telly's lunch date with Cookie at Hooper's Store gets cancelled due to Cookie attending a cookie convention in Cucamonga, Sally Field stands in for Cookie. Sally eats a bunch of cookies the way Cookie does, but Telly tells Gina that Sally didn't eat the plate. As if on cue, Sally does just that.
- In a musical animation for the letter O, a goat is found eating a bowl of "bones, potatoes, and soap". He consumes the bowl as well.
- In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Cost of Living" several scenes are set in Holodeck recreations of the mud baths of the Parallax Colony, where characters are seen drinking alien beverages and then eating the cups that hold them.
- The Wiggles: In the "Nutrition" episode, Anthony is dreaming of eating pasta on a stage in front of an audience. As Murray serves him food, Anthony decides to eat more than just the food, but the plate too.
Manhua
- In a Old Master Q strip, the titular character is very hungry after a long day, and orders a bowl of noodle soup for dinner. After gorging himself, Old Master Q pays and leaves, and the waiter sees a half-circle eaten off one corner of the bowl.
Music
- Evillious Chronicles: Banica Conchita is a noblewoman who makes a deal with the Demon of Gluttony and develops a taste for the most disgusting, toxic, and inedible meals known to man. Her Image Song "Evil Food Eater Conchita" describes her devouring heaping plates of Masochists Meals. When her appetite is still not satisfied, she eats the dinnerware...and her personal chef...and her servants...and finally herself. Somehow.
Eat until there's nothing but bones
If that's not enough, chew on the dishes
The happiness that dances on the tip of the tongue
Tonight's dinner is far from over!
Mythology & Religion
- In the Prose Edda, at the palace of Utgard-Loki, Loki has an eating contest with a giant named Logi; Loki is so famished, he eats all his food, but Logi wins by eating the food, the bones, and the serving dishes. This is justified by revealing Logi to be an Anthropomorphic Personification of fire.
Radio
- In The Goon Show, Eccles, being a Paste Eater, has been known to do this:
Bloodnok: Quick! Get behind this X-Ray screen.
[Buzzing]
Eccles: Ooh!
Bloodnok: Just as I thought — he's had a plate of porridge for breakfast.
Seagoon: Feed line: How do you know?
Bloodnok: I can see the plate!
Video Games
- Banjo-Tooie: At the start of Klungo's fights, Klungo will drink a potion and then eat the beaker it came in.
- Chained Echoes: Tomke is an Extreme Omni-Goat who shoves enemies into cans, then eats them, can and all, to learn their abilities.
- Dispatch: At The Sardine, Robert gives Golem two glasses of whisky and he consumes them both, glass and all.
- Epic Battle Fantasy: When the player uses canned drinks, the characters will eat the can. Lampshaded by Matt in Epic Battle Fantasy 5.
Matt: Mmmmm, crunchy metal can, full of zinc and iron.
- Miitopia: The eating animation for the Miis has them has them waving a fork and knife at the sprite for the "Grub" you give them, which shrinks as they gobble it up. This includes whatever dishes the food was on, which, due to the eclectic range of the dishes, includes everything from plates and bowls to jars, metal platters, wooden boards and even slabs of rock.
- NetHack: If you are currently polymorphed into a creature that can eat metal, you will eat tinned food by biting right through the tin.
- Pokémon Sleep: Every time Snorlax and the helpers are fed a meal, they eat the dish it came in and even the lace doily beneath it.
- Pumkin Land: The Hungry Pumkin may order soda, salt and pepper, and glasses of water. When you give them to him, he will eat the container they come in.
- In the trippy, psychedelic FPS game 77p egg: Eggwife you eat everything you can get your hands on to regain health. Ranging from eggs in the local supermarket — shells and carton included — to food with wrappers included and bottles of drinks.
- River City Ransom has your character cheerfully wolf down any food they order in a single gulp, with includes whatever dish, bowl, glass, or ramekin it was served in.
- Stardew Valley: The player character's eating animation has them throwing the food up in the air and catching it in their mouth whole, which includes the plates, bowls, and glasses for the recipes that have them.
- Tales of Symphonia: When the party needs access to the Earth Temple, the Gnomelette guarding the temple asks for a bottle of potion. Upon giving the Gnomelette the potion, the Gnomelettle proceeds to eat the potion, along with the bottle itself.
- Tomodachi Life: A good portion of the food items ingame come on plates. You never get the plate back after feeding the Mii, and if you check their stomach after, it's in there. Downplayed as it's not an intentional use of the trope, but moreso a result of the assets for the food not being able to be separated into different parts since they are photographs.
Web Animation
- Battle for Dream Island
- In "The Great Goikian Bake-off", the challenge is to make dinner for Two. Snowball gets the idea to steal one of Four and X's hotel meals and eventually succeeds. When Snowball presents the meal to Two, they swallow the whole thing including the bag it came in.
Snowball: Uhh, the food was inside the bag.
Two: I loved the whole thing! Though the bag might've actually been my favorite part!- In "Escape Nightmare Island!", one of the legs of the challenge is an eating contest. When Sticker and Sidewalky complete it, they eat the plate the chicken tenders were served on, and do so in such a way that many viewers don't even notice what happened.
- Robo-Maid: Exaggerated. When Mary is given a desert plate as a reward for her work, she discards the desert and eats the plate.
- The Stickworld: During a conversation with the Creator, Overseer Justice ends up eating their plate and cup along with the food that was on it. Justified since stick figures don't have organs like the Creator and therefore likely process food in a different manner.
- A World Without...: Happens in "A World Without... Garbage", as a popsicle has an edible stick and bubblegum wrapper, complete with a kid blowing a bubble with a barcode on it.
Web Comics
- Ask White Pearl and Steven (almost!) anything: Pearl doesn't need food and is extremely Literal-Minded, so when Steven encourages her to eat while she's holding a box of crackers, she eats the box of crackers.
- Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures: Dimanika eats the punch bowl at Piflak's party, and leaves the punch itself still standing in a bowl shape.
- Pebble and Wren: In one strip, Pebble cuts a pizza in half... and eats the box, while Wren eats the whole pizza.
- Surviving the Game as a Barbarian: When Bjorn the Barbarian is hired as a prop for a nobleman's party, the butler hassles him for not acting enough like a "fearsome warrior", so, in a bit of malicious compliance, he lets out a Battle Cry and tears into the lunch buffet, chewing up bone-in haunches of meat while the guests watch in amazement.
Web Video
- In the Tasting History with Max Miller video about Pompeiian pizza, he notes that the "crust" was likely a Mensa, a flatbread that, much like a medieval trencher, was probably intended to carry food like a plate. He also notes that Mensae are mentioned in The Aeneid where Aeneas is given a prophecy that he will establish a great city after his army faces a great famine and are forced to eat their tables in desperation. Later, when he and his forces are in Italy and their provisions are so limited that they have to eat the Mensae they use to hold fruit ("Mensa" translates literally to "table") leading Aeneas to have a "Eureka!" Moment and realize they have found the site where they were destined to found the great city later known as Rome.
Aeneas: Look! We are eating even our tables! This is our home!
Max Miller: So, in a way, Italy was founded through the eating of pizza. - A certain parody of the Synth V song Butcher Vanity alters the lyrics to be about eating plates.
Western Animation
- Aaahh!!! Real Monsters: In "This is Your Brain on Ickis", Ickis gets trapped in the brain of Simon the Monster Hunter and controls his body from within it. At one point, Ickis takes Simon to a mini-mart and asks the clerk for some garbage to eat. The clerk gives Simon a tray of burritos, and Simon eats the whole thing, tray and all.
- American Dad!:
- Invoked; in "Stan’s Food Restaurant", when Stan opens his own restaurant, he makes pancake plates. At one point, Roger tries to discredit his restaurant by claiming to have found a fly in his salad, but Stan proves that his dish didn't come from his restaurant by forcing Roger to eat his plate, which is very much not edible.
- "Virtual In-Sanity", after realizing that he has missed every milestone in Steve's life, Stan makes a desperate attempt to bond with his son by creating a busty blonde bombshell alias, Phyllis. As the two were watching a baseball game, Steve offered Phyllis a chili dog, and she would munch it down completely.
Steve: [concerned] Oh, there was a paper doily under that, but I’m sure you’ll figure that out later…
- DuckTales (2017): In "The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee!", Mark Beaks drinks a Super Serum that turns him huge and muscular. During their battle, Gizmoduck flings a number of cream pies at him, two of which Beaks simply catches in his mouth and swallows whole, baking pans and all.
Mark Beaks: Wait, did I just eat the pie tins?
- Exaggerated in the Family Guy episode "Are You There God!? It’s Me, Peter". Peter is so disappointed with his kids’ choice of meal at Fuddruckers (Chris' being plain and Meg's having a turkey patty), he overcompensates by putting cutlery, a salt shaker, the car keys, and two(!) of the plastic baskets the food comes in into his sandwich.
Peter: THAT'S Fuddruckers!
- Gravity Falls: Attempted in "Blendin's Game'', when Mabel gets so excited to eat her free candy she decides to eat them with the wrappers still on. It goes about as well as you would expect for a 12-year-old girl.
Mabel: Forget taking off the wrappers! I'm eating these now! [...] [coughing with the wrapped candy still in her mouth] THAT WAS A MISTAKE! [falls to the ground]
- House of Mouse: In the short "How to be a Gentleman", while Goofy practices table manners, The Narrator mentions that a gentleman doesn't leave until he has eaten everything in front of him; so Goofy eats all the dinnerware and the table itself.
Goofy: Gotta have your iron.
- Muppet Babies (1984): In "The Great Cookie Robbery", Nanny tasks Gonzo with giving each of the other babies one cookie from a box of cookies to help tide them over while she makes lunch. However, Gonzo keeps the box for himself and eats every last cookie from it. This comes back to bite him at the end of the episode, as he becomes too stuffed to even look at, let alone eat the peanut butter and banana sandwich that Nanny made for him. Animal makes sure that the sandwich doesn't go to waste by eating it himself, and he eats the plate along with it.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In "The Return of Harmony", Discord conjures up a glass of chocolate milk, drinks the glass, and throws the milk away (which explodes behind him).
- In "Make New Friends but Keep Discord", while having a tea party at Fluttershy's, Discord takes a bite out of the side of a teacup.
- In "Triple Threat", Spike and Starlight Glimmer invite Firelord Ember to Twilight's castle for a meal, where she ends up pouring out the food and eats the bowl instead; though this is justified since Twilight's tableware are all made of crystal and gems are a dragon's favorite food.
- The Owl House: In "Escape of the Palisman", King throws a bottle of elixir into Owl-Beast Eda's mouth (spitting out the cork) and it's not until the end of the episode that she coughs the empty bottle back out.
- Rugrats: In "Hold the Pickles", Taffy takes the babies to Boingo Burger for lunch, where she gives each of them a Wacky Meal (the equivalent of a Happy Meal from McDonald's). Phil gets a cheeseburger and as he eats it, he eats its wrapper as well. Lil tells him she doesn't think he's supposed to eat the wrapper, but that doesn't stop him from continuing to eat it.
- Shaun the Sheep: As the sheep eat their pizzas in the episode "Take Away", resident Extreme Omnivore Shirley eats hers like a giant cookie, box and all.
- The Simpsons: In "E Pluribus Wiggum", Homer eats a ton of unhealthy food right before starting his diet. This includes a cheese pizza with fries and a whole lobster on it, which he eats with the cardboard box it came in.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- In "Have You Seen This Snail?", Patrick gets up in the morning to meet SpongeBob with a cup of coffee. He first swigs all the coffee in one go, followed by him tossing the entire mug itself into his mouth and munching on it.
- In "The Goofy Newbie", Patrick swallows all the ice cream in the Goofy Goobers, along with the bowls.
- In "Necro-Nom-Nom-Nom-I-Con", a fish eating bacon and eggs for breakfast is also seen directly biting into the plate.
- Steven Universe: In the extended music video for "We Are the Crystal Gems," Amethyst eats a sandwich and part of the plate it was on as well.
- What A Cartoon! Show: In "Kitchen Casanova", a man cooks a meal for his date and when they both eat it at the end, they both get lost into some kind of feeding frenzy and they eat not only the meal but the plates and the entire table.
Real Life
- Henry VIII used to eat sculptures made of sugar. He would then eat the plate (which was also made of sugar).
- The Sorbos Straws, are the very first edible, flavored, and 100% sustainable straw in the market. The material is marketed as a new way to consume beverages and to protect the world from pollution. Such straws come in chocolate, strawberry, lemon, lime, and multi-flavor.
- Bakeys, a bakery in India, created edible spoons and other cutlery made of biscuits as a way to reduce plastic disposable cutlery.
- Trenchers, which are now generally made of traditional plate materials, used to be slabs of often-stale bread that could be eaten alongside the meal or given to the poor.
- Bread bowls can be considered a successor to trenchers in concept.
- Some forms of historical pastries were meant to be solely containers and not to be eaten along with the filling; sometimes these pastry shells were given to the poor after the filling was eaten.