Meanings
- uncountableThe exhaustion of one's appetite due to dietary monotony.
In space, menu fatigue can have serious consequences. Lost appetites could result in astronauts not eating enough food, which may lead to body mass loss, nutritional deficiencies, and other health issues.
2021 May 5, Nathan Cranford, Jennifer L. Turner, “How Does Spaceflight Change Food Appeal?”, in Roundup, Johnson Space Center, NASA, archived from the original on 24 Jun 20211 more example
A large variety of food is needed to provide the crew choices and to avoid menu fatigue. The monotony effects from repeated food exposures are factors of duration of exposure, the initial pleasantness of the foods consumed repeatedly over time, and frequency and recency of eating the food ... food is consistently identified in [post-spaceflight] debriefs as one of, if not the most, important factor to crew morale. The variety and quality are important to motivate consistent caloric intake and prevent nutritional deficiency and weight loss.
2016 October 5, Evidence Report: Risk of Performance Decrement and Crew Illness Due to an Inadequate Food System, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, page 20
Origin
Cite this entry
menu fatigue. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/menu%20fatigue
“menu fatigue.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/menu%20fatigue. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “menu fatigue,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/menu%20fatigue.
Source: menu fatigue on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.