This Is Exactly What Amelia Earhart Ate During Her Flights

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Amelia Earhart food
Amelia Earhart food

When you think of Amelia Earhart, you probably think of how badass she is, right? For one — she was the very first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, receiving the honor of the United States Distinguished Flying Cross, a military aviation award. Besides setting many incredible records, Amelia also wrote bestselling books about her flights and helped to form the Ninety-Nines, an organization that championed for more female pilots. She went on to teach at universities, fought for women’s rights, and joined the National Woman’s Party.

Seriously, Amelia wasn’t playing around. She was — excuse the unfortunate pun — ride or die. Sadly, Amelia and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on July 2nd. According to History.com, the U.S. Coast Guard was the last to pick up radio messages indicating that she was lost and low in fuel.

They were on their way to Howland Island from Papua New Guinea. While most experts hold on to the most-likely theory that they crashed and sank, there have been numerous conspiracy theories around their disappearance. For example, people have speculated as to whether Amelia and her navigator were captured by the Japanese, that they were spies for FDR, that she lived under a new identity, or that she was eaten by coconut crabs. Yep, that’s an actual theory.

And so is this:

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Interestingly enough, a new-ish photograph was recently found, leading to all sorts of fresh ideas around her disappearance. Some believe that it shows Amelia (and Noonan) on a dock in the Marshall Islands.

This is that photo:

According to NPR, “The experts interviewed for the special believe this photo lends powerful credence to the theory that when Earhart couldn’t find Howland Island — her next refueling station — she turned back westward and landed on Mili Atoll. They think Earhart and Noonan were then rescued and taken to Jaluit Island, where there was a deepwater port.”

That would certainly be a plot twist if it were true.

In some ways, we’ll never really know.

Regardless of the many theories, though, one thing is for certain: Amelia flew with passion, grace, and wit — and she paved the way for other women to do the same. She was a true pioneer who successfully secured a spot in our history textbooks. And now that we’ve looked into her incredible history of accomplishments, we can ask the question:

What the heck did Amelia eat up there? 

You have to wonder what a pilot actually eats while circumnavigating the globe (alone, without the assistance of a flight attendant whipping up some sandwiches and much-needed coffee), right? We already know airline food is either hit or miss (serious misses, in fact), but Amelia’s time was during a totally different era.

According to NPR, Earhart said, during a radio interview, that she often got questioned about her eating habits while flying.

Turns out, we aren’t the only ones wondering about what one would eat while up in the sky. She said: “A question I’m asked frequently concerns what a pilot eats on long flights… This aspect of ‘aeronautical housekeeping’ particularly interests women.”

Amelia, you’d be right. We’d love to know!

Amelia received her piloting license in 1923 when aviation was still pretty new.

Unlike today, she couldn’t rely on smart or healthy pre-prepared flight food. Amelia, according to NPR, said that food had to be balanced enough to “prevent fatigue but not enough to induce drowsiness.” Good point. And you have to remember that Amelia often flew alone, so she couldn’t rely on a co-pilot at all times. With this in mind, we could all learn a thing or two about energy-inducing foods from Amelia Earhart.

There’s nothing worse than eating a big meal over the Atlantic and falling asleep in the cockpit — which, by the way, has happened (and has led to the unthinkable). 

Additionally, Amelia said that any food eaten while flying would have to be easy to munch on.

So Amelia created her own eating device, to make flying and snacking easier: “Since pilots have only two hands and dozens of things to do, mealtime technique has to be simple,” she said. “So I’ve developed a gadget, which is really a fat ice pick. With the can between my knees, one-handed, I punch a hole in the top. A straw just fits the hole — and the rest is easy.”

Besides punching holes in her food, Amelia wasn’t keen on packing tons of food into the planes simply because she wanted to keep the plane’s weight down.

Food was clearly an important part of her journey.

As she joked, “A pilot whose land plane falls into the Atlantic is not consoled by caviar sandwiches.” So, as she explained regarding her flight over the Atlantic, “My concern was simply to fly alone to Europe. Extra clothes and extra food would have been extra weight and extra worry.”

So what did she bring with her?

It turns out that Amelia relied on beverages pretty heavily. Amelia especially loved to down tomato juice while flying.

Interestingly, Amelia loved a bit of the ol’ tomato juice — a favorite among flyers even today.

And there’s a reason why we all reach for the stuff. In the air, when you’re up over 30,000 feet, the cabin pressure is pretty low, which means there’s less oxygen circulating in your blood. This does a doozy on your taste buds, making them less receptive to all those flavors you’d normally sense on the ground. That makes the bold flavor of tomato juice a good option. And since people see other passengers ordering it, they want one, too!

In fact, the German airline Lufthansa serves about 53,000 gallons of tomato juice every single year.

That’s A LOT of people who like the salty drink — or just a bunch of people who enjoy a bloody mary in-flight, according to NBC.

In fact, Amelia liked tomato juice cold — and hot. Sort of like a soup. “Tomato juice is my favorite ‘working’ beverage, and food too,” says Earhart. “In colder weather, it may be heated and kept hot in a thermos.” Oh, and if you’re wondering about how she, well, went to the bathroom while flying, you’re not the only one.

Apparently, it was very difficult to figure it out, especially as a woman pilot.

Some people thought she simply relieved herself in her seat, while others thought she held it — sometimes for as long as 19 hours. Via author Kathleen Colvin’s blog, “According to [biographer] Doris L. Rich, after one of Earhart’s long-distance flights, an aviation mechanic told an aeronautical designer her plane reeked with urine.” Yikes!

And aside from tomato juice?

Beyond tomato juice, Amelia was all about hot chocolate, which she also kept in a thermos. According to The Independent, when Earhart became the first human to ever fly from Honolulu to California, she did so by drinking hot chocolate. Over 2,408 miles over the Pacific, that hot chocolate sustained her. Pretty amazing, right?

Then again, hot chocolate is pretty magical.

Apparently, she also enjoyed a few raisins, and a hard-boiled egg here and there, too, which doesn’t sound like enough. (And in many ways, it wasn’t. There is an indication that Amelia was emaciated before her death, having to contend with long flights and little food). On her solo flight to Mexico City from New York, she ate a hard-boiled egg. In fact, she even described the clouds as “little white eggs.

It must have been easy to compare the sky to food when you’re hungry and surrounded by nothing for miles and miles.

But people always tried to feed her when she landed.

They were excited to have her land in their towns. Fans from all over welcomed her with food and delights — enchanted by her piloting prowess. In Londonderry, Ireland, she was given cups of tea. In Illinois, she was made a chicken dinner. And these were just from the locals. It truly does take a village.

Of course, she was invited to “official dinners,” which were held in her honor as she flew around the world.

Consider the famous “starvation interview,” which, you’ll see, isn’t exactly as it seems.

Once, when she was invited to visit the White House while the Roosevelts were in office, a reporter asked her about the White House food… which was apparently so bad that it became a sort of national joke. Of course, Amelia would never say a bad word about it, but she did say that she was so busy, she didn’t eat much. People like to twist things, of course, and so people assumed she meant she was being starved.

(Right, because that’s likely.)

So, Amelia, being as delightful as she was, wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt and said she never meant to say that. Mrs. Roosevelt, of course, understood and said she adored Amelia.

Amelia then jokingly asked Mrs. Roosevelt, “Perhaps you will let me raid the ice-box sometime, not because it’s necessary but because it’s fun.”

It sounds like the two of them truly enjoyed one another’s company!

And yes, “ice box” was an early 2oth century term. It could have meant both an actual ice box and also a refrigerator.

Beyond raiding the White House fridge, Amelia apparently also loved Chinese food. According to Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart, she truly did love this type of cuisine.  In the 1920s and 1930s, Chinese food was flourishing, but Americans were nothing short of racist with their assumptions about Chinese cuisine, serving up “authentic” chop suey in joints across America. According to Time, however, “the average native of any city in China knows nothing of chop suey.”

However, no chopsticks (which she apparently loved to use) were allowed in the cockpit.

It just wasn’t easy for her to navigate a plane, food, and chopsticks. Makes sense — if you’re not someone who was raised using chopsticks.

Interestingly enough, Amelia also had fond memories of hot cocoa while flying, though. Yes, please! 

On one flight over Honolulu and California, Amelia said, “It was a night of stars… Above, the clouds they hung so close it seemed I could reach out from the cockpit and touch them. And there, 8,000 feet over the sea, in a very solitary world with only the stars for company, I luxuriated in a cup of cocoa — altogether the strangest midnight lunch I can remember.”

There’s something so poetic about her words, and so inspiring in her bravery and willingness to set so many records.

We can’t say we’d fly 2,500 miles in an airplane all alone, with nothing to munch on but a thermos of tomato juice.

Would you want to eat any of this?

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