Oh boy. You and your friends have been cornered by monsters made of food that want you dead. You've tried everything you can think of to get rid of the edible enemies. You tried beating them down but your hands and feet just get stuck. You've tried slicing and blasting them to bits, but they just keep regenerating. You're running out of options. Only one thing left to try — if you can't beat 'em, EAT EM!

This trope occurs whenever the characters find that the best way to destroy their opponent for good is to eat their opponent. This often happens when the heroes are dealing with evil Anthropomorphic Food or monsters made of an edible substance. However, this trope isn't restricted to food-based enemies. The only requirement is that character(s) invoking this trope end up finding that the best, if not, only option to dispatch the foe is to eat them. Of course, the trope can also apply if eating sentient beings becomes the being's method of choice for dispatching foes. Keep in mind though that mere predation (as in eating a sentient being merely for sustenance) is not this trope. The key criteria here is that whoever is invoking this is doing this as a means of defeating their foe or for some special purpose.

More often than not, the characters will hesitate a lot before resorting to this out of disgust at the prospect of having to eat a sentient being alive. However, a Big Eater, Extreme Omnivore, or an individual with a Black-Hole Belly will do this without a second thought. And if there's only one such individual in a group, it's often up to them to defeat the scrumptious scourge.

This trope being invoked by a good guy is an effective way of establishing them as a Token Evil Teammate or Sociopathic Hero and serves as a good reminder that often Good is Not Nice. As for villains, this often is used to show just how grievous and abhorrent they are, and it's the perfect way to have them sail into the Moral Event Horizon for a sensitive audience. A desperate villain might try this as a last resort if they can't win through conventional means. Villains will often attempt this after they become a more monstrous One-Winged Angel, especially Big Bads. Also done frequently by Eldritch Abominations, Killer Rabbits, and incredibly huge beings.

As you can expect, this often doesn't go well. When a character manages to eat their opponent, but ends up suffering for it, you have Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth. When done by a big being, this can lead to a "Fantastic Voyage" Plot or Womb Level that'll often end with the eaten beings being able to escape, but not before doing serious damage to the being that ate them, if not outright defeat them.

When done to others of their own kind, it's I'm a Humanitarian. When done to humans in particular, it crosses with To Serve Man. When this happens between characters who all display sapience, you have Sapient Eat Sapient. A tactic potential victims will use to try to avoid this is say that You Won't Like How I Taste.

Don't confuse this with Just Eat Him. In that trope, the character in question is in the perfect position to be able to devour their foe, but doesn't for some illogical reason.

Often done by foes with a Vacuum Mouth or Multipurpose Tongue. Furthermore, see Swallowed Whole for well, when the victim is swallowed up. A Muck Monster or Blob Monster might invoke this by enveloping their foe into their slimy bodies.

This trope naturally goes hand in hand with Cannibalism Superpower where using this tactic allows one to copy the foe's abilities. Also see You Are Who You Eat.

If someone invokes this by having something else eat the character for them, you have Fed to the Beast. And if the user gets the foe to consume themselves, you have Autocannibalism.

If the villain in particular gets eaten by something in the end, it's Just Desserts.

Eating Solves Everything often comes into play for this.

Compare Eat the Bomb where the character decides to eat a bomb or some other dangerous object rather than a sentient being.

Contrast Eat Me where the being allows/wants themselves to be eaten to gain an advantage like being able to hit a weak spot from the inside.

Before reading, keep in mind that this often ends up being a Death Trope (for one of the parties involved), so be wary of spoilers.

And as a side note, this trope happens to be the backbone of a variation of Rule 34 known as vorarephilia. Be careful searching this up online if you're not into that.

Examples