Do you ever wonder if your diet would be different if you were rich and famous?
Let’s say you woke up this morning a world-famous spaghetti western musician with money coming out the wazoo.
Would you still go for the granola on greek yoghurt with a latte for breakfast? Or would the availability of a personal chef have you going for something a little more outlandish, like a turmeric wheatgrass aloe acai bowl with decadent lashings of Ancient Egyptian honey?
In ‘The Gannet’s Gastronomic Miscellany‘, an extract of which was published in The Guardian, author Killian Fox details the nutty eating habits of the world’s most infamous people.
From Hunter S. Thompson‘s favourite dessert (it’s “six lines of the best cocaine”) to Jackie Onassis‘ daily habit of beluga caviar-stuffed baked potatoes, these exceedingly extra eating habits will make you feel totally, deliciously regular.
Steve Jobs explains that the title for his company Apple was actually inspired by his diet.
“I was on one of my fruitarian diets [and] had just come back from the apple farm,” he told his biographer Walter Isaacson.
Jobs was a vegan for most of his adult life, dabbled with the even more restrictive fruitarian diet and would spend weeks at a time eating only one or two foods, like apples or carrots. (He believed his diet neutralised body odour and meant that he didn’t need to wash regularly or wear deodorant, though his co-workers believed otherwise.)
Sometimes Jobs stopped eating entirely, savouring the “euphoria and ecstasy” of fasting, though he was also acutely appreciative of a good avocado. “He believed that great harvests came from arid sources, pleasure from restraint,” noted his daughter Lisa.
Father of gonzo journalism, Hunter S. Thompson, liked drugs.
He also liked food. As he explains in his autobiography, The Great Shark Hunt, he believed breakfast should be “a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess.”
“The food factor should always be massive: four bloody marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon or corned beef hash with diced chillies, a Spanish omelette or eggs benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of key lime pie, two margaritas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert … All of which,” he concluded, “should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked.”
Legend has it that Jackie Onassis would eat one baked potato a day stuffed with beluga caviar and soured cream. She watched the scales “with the rigour of a diamond merchant counting his carats”, according to her social secretary Tish Baldrige. If she went a couple of pounds over her usual weight, she would fast for a day, then confine herself to a diet of fruit until she was back to normal.
Marlon Brando had difficulties with his weight throughout his life, veering between crash diets and gorging sprees.
Early in his career, he was known to eat peanut butter by the jarful, boxes of cinnamon buns and huge breakfasts consisting of cornflakes, sausages, eggs, bananas and cream, and pancakes drenched in maple syrup. He would devour up to six hotdogs at a time in late-night feasts at Pink’s in Hollywood (they named an all-beef hotdog after him in 2012).
Defying attempts by work colleagues and loved ones to regulate his diet, he would break refrigerator locks at night, flee film sets with giant tubs of ice-cream and enlist friends to throw burger bags over the gates of his Mulholland Drive estate.
Twin Peaks director David Lynch claims his relationship with coffee began at the age of three.
At one stage, the film-maker was drinking 20 cups a day; nowadays he averages 10, although the cup size has increased. A good coffee, he says, “should have no bitterness, and it should be smooth and rich in flavour. I like to drink espresso with milk, like a latte or a cappuccino, but the espresso should have a golden foam. It can be so beautiful.”
There you go, folks. You don’t have to feel so shameful about your $6 turmeric latte habit anymore.
