The food curiosities continue from the new book What the Great Ate, by brothers Matthew and Mark Jacob.They are convinced that the eating habits of the famous offer an insight into their character.
Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, ate butterflies, while Actor Jackie Gleason liked his pot roast with a scoop of ice cream on top.
Mark Jacob (above photo) talked to the Star about what the great ate:
Q: First, let’s clear up something: Eve didn’t offer Adam an apple?
A: Well it might have been an apple, but more likely a different fruit. Some think an apricot, pomegranate, even a fig. One theory is that the apple tale came later when Christian missionaries shared Bible stories with Teutonic tribes, who had a strong attachment to the apple as a symbol of their Earth mother.
Q: Another surprise: Buddha was skinny?
A: He frequently fasted. One of his meals consisted of one sesame seed, one grain of rice, one jujube, one pulse pod, one kidney bean and one mungo bean. He’s even said to have described his own gaunt ribs. This is ancient legend. We were unable to interview Buddha to confirm the details.
Q: Who among the greats were the greatest gluttons?
A: You gotta say Elvis Presley. He grew up poor, eating fried squirrel. When he became rich, he embraced everything, especially food. He had a closed-circuit television trained on his kitchen and a 24-hour cook staff at Graceland. He wouldn’t eat a piece of pie; he’d eat the whole pie. The Pepsi truck would deliver to grocery stores and to Graceland, an official stop.
He once flew more than 800 miles just to eat a sandwich. He mentioned to two friends about a sandwich he’d once had outside Denver and one of them said he’d like to try it. So Elvis had his private jet fuelled up, and someone called ahead to the restaurant. Elvis and his friends flew to Denver, where the sandwiches were delivered to the hangar. The sandwich was called Fool’s Gold. It was an entire loaf of Italian bread, hollowed out, and filled with peanut butter, grape jelly and an entire pound of bacon.
Q: How much did Elvis eat a day?
A: My brother and I tried to debunk myths in the book. We’d read that Elvis’s daily caloric intake equaled that of an Asian elephant, which would be about 65,000 calories a day. We checked with a nutritional expert who said no way he ate that much. The expert estimated that Elvis ate not more than 10,000 – 12,000 calories a day. (The recommended intake for an average adult male is 2,500 calories a day.)
Q: How do the eating eccentricities of the famous and infamous give us insight about them?
A: For example, George Washington, after being inaugurated president, had lunch by himself. While he was greatly admired, he was a solitary figure, not a fun guy.
Dwight Eisenhower, after hearing of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, went to his kitchen and made vegetable soup. I think that says a lot about Ike’s deliberative process. He liked to mull over things, not make rash decisions.
I love the Paul Newman story. The actor was on a date with his wife-to-be Joanne Woodward. When the salad was delivered to the table, he hated the way the oil was on it. He snuck the salad into the men’s room and washed it. He then asked the waiter for vinegar and oil and made his own salad dressing at the table. We know that he later devised his own salad dressing and sold it. But I think it also says a lot about his perfectionism, how he wanted to get it just right.
Q: Okay. How about Hitler?
A: Before he rose to power, some fellow activists gave him a birthday party. When the cake came out, Hitler refused to eat it. He said the apartment’s landlord was Jewish and he thought he might get poisoned. That goes to Hitler’s paranoia.
Stalin was a dictator and cruel tyrant at the dinner table. He’d invite people to dine and then order the waiter to put more pepper into one person’s food. He put a tomato on someone’s chair so when that person sat down it would make a rude noise. One Communist official said that when you went to dine with Stalin you didn’t know if you’d leave or be led away. He liked to create fear and discomfort in people.
Q: Any shocking revelations?
A: When Joe Louis was preparing for a boxing match, his trainer took him to the Chicago stockyards and had him drink blood from the slaughterhouse to toughen him up.
Q: Because of digestion problems, you say, oil tycoon J.D. Rockefeller in his later years relied on breast milk. How did that work?
A: He got it from wet nurses that he kept on staff. We were unable to discover the precise procedure involved.
Many famous American tycoons were rather crazy. Henry Ford thought that granulated sugar would cut up his stomach.
Q: If you were going to have investment guru Warren Buffett over for a meal, what would you serve him?
A: He’s obsessed with Cherry Coke. He once said it’s amazing what Cherry Coke and hamburgers will do for a fellow.
Q: Among Hollywood celebrities, Angelina Jolie has some odd tastes.
A: She’s a world traveler who likes to do what the locals do. In Cambodia, she ate cockroaches. She said it was a high-protein food. She also tried bee larva, but didn’t like it. She has very discriminating tastes: No to bee larva, yes to cockroach.
Q: You’ve ruined Clark Gable for me. He had onion breath?
A: Yeah. Same thing with Spencer Tracey. Years ago a lot of people ate onions alone or in sandwiches. Gable ate raw onions on bread and by themselves. Female co-stars occasionally complained about his breath. That takes a little romance out, doesn’t it?
