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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Toritoribe" data-source="post: 794183" data-attributes="member: 37151">The thread I linked above is exactly about this topic. You can see that we were also talking about ～ている/てる in the thread.I found another thread of the same topic.<a href="https://jref.com/threads/trying-to-make-sense-out-of-adjective-verb-conjugations.40787/#post-610924">Trying to Make Sense Out Of Adjective/Verb Conjugations | Japan Forum</a>食べなかった just expresses that you didn't eat it at a past time. It can mean you actually ate it later in an extreme case.e.g.A: 昨日僕の昼ごはん食べた？Did you eat my lunch yesterday?B: 昨日は食べなかったけど、さっき食べた。I didn't eat yesterday, but I ate it just now.On the other hand, 食べて（い）ない is the present state resulting from the past action "didn't eat", thus, "didn't eat and haven't eaten even now". That's the reason 食べて（い）ない is more common as the answer in that situation.</blockquote>