All Of The Foods The Beatles Really Ate

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beatles diet
beatles diet

The Beatles rock band was one of the first to achieve world fame. So naturally, some people wonder which foods fueled all that creativity and musical talent. The Beatles’ diet wasn’t just important offstage, either. References to food and drink peppered many of the Fab Four’s song titles, including “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “A Taste of Honey,” and “Honey Pie.” These songs tended to be about women, though, so that’s metaphorical honey. And perhaps their tastiest song was “Savoy Truffle.”

Food references also appeared in the lyrics of one of the band’s most famous and surreal songs, “I Am the Walrus.” John Lennon wrote the tune to tease fans who took his lyrics too seriously. He used lines like “Sitting on a cornflake,” “I am the egg man,” and “Yellow matter custard” to create a song that’s basically just a load of nonsense, knowing it would still get picked apart and analyzed by people who wanted insight about their favorite band. (In fact, he reminds us a lot of a similarly cunning artist — Taylor Swift.)

Away from the recording studio, various members of the Beatles approached food in different ways. Lennon allegedly suffered from bulimia, and he was also the only member of the band who didn’t go full-time vegetarian. He did try it out, though, along with juice diets and macrobiotics, according to his widow, Yoko Ono. Surviving Beatles members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are still vegetarians today, but they weren’t always so anti-meat. Here’s what the Beatles’ diet looked like then and now.

1. Corn Flakes with Cream

When John Lennon was born in 1940, many people in England had to endure World War II rationing; cream and many other things were true luxuries. Consequently, the combination of corn flakes and thick cream was a treat for Lennon. He even mentioned corn flakes in “I am the Walrus.” Lennon also reportedly enjoyed ice cream with Rice Krispies. Some rumors suggested the singer worried about overeating and purging, but Yoko Ono denied it.

2. Fish and Chips

As regular working class Liverpool boys, the Beatles band members had a taste for regular everyday foods, like the beloved British classic, fish and chips. We’re not talking potato chips; the fellas enjoyed thick potato fries served with battered cod. Everything was seasoned with salt and vinegar and wrapped in newspaper. There’s even an outtake of the band making their film, Magical Mystery Tour in 1967 that shows the boys in a cozy fish and chip shop, surrounded by locals. In The Rock and Roll Cookbook, published by Mary Frampton (ex-wife of songwriter Peter Frampton) in 1980, Ringo Starr contributed, “Travel to your local fish and chip shop. Ask for cod and chips. Add salt and vinegar to taste. Eat with fingers for best results!”

3. Steak

They had this in the pre-vegetarian days.

The Beatles didn’t become the world’s most famous vegetarians immediately. In 1964, an interviewer asked Ringo Starr what the band members liked to eat on behalf of the hundreds of fans who begged a radio station to find out. Starr said, “We eat steak usually if we go out. Steak and chips. Egg and chips. Beans. Bacon. Chicken.” The meat-heavy diet didn’t go on for too much longer, though. George Harrison was the first Beatle to go vegetarian in 1965 (although he loosened his rules later), followed by Paul McCartney and Starr, and sometimes John Lennon.

4. Roast Dinner

It was courtesy of Mr. Harrison senior.

The Beatles rose to fame in Britain and Europe in 1963 after the release of their first number one single and debut album, both titled “Please Please Me.” And in 1964, they took America by storm after appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show. Fans around the world wanted to know every little detail about the Beatles, and the boys supplied the facts in interview after interview. George Harrison shared that he especially loved his family’s food. He noted, “My father’s cooking [is] first-rate, especially when it comes to a roast Sunday dinner.” Harrison’s first wife, Pattie Boyd, also loved to cook. In her autobiography, she mentioned, “I tried to make the sorts of things I imagined boys from the north would like — shepherd’s pie, roast beef, and Yorkshire pudding.” Ironically, she said, her husband was rarely hungry.

5. Eggs

They were the egg men.

Eggs played a surprising role in one of the Beatles’ most famous songs. In 1963, Paul McCartney woke up with the tune of “Yesterday” fully formed in his mind. While he played it for one of his friends, his mother walked into the room and asked if anyone wanted scrambled eggs. McCartney liked how that sounded, so added the “scrambled eggs” lyrics on top of his previously wordless tune. Eventually, those lyrics turned into “Oh baby how I love your legs,” although it’s not clear whom he was complimenting! According to Patti Boyd’s book, even appetite-free George Harrison sometimes enjoyed a fried egg for breakfast. And Ringo Starr preferred eggs to the spicy food the other band members ate during their spiritual quests in India.

6. Chicken Maryland

Pre-vegetarian Paul McCartney liked roast beef as well as a dish called Chicken Maryland. And in the United States, this dish consists of fried chicken with a thick, creamy gravy. That type of gravy wasn’t common in the United Kingdom, though. So it’s likely that McCartney ate a totally different version. In the 1950s (when he was a kid), Brits took the fried chicken and added bacon, cornbread, pineapple rings, and fried bananas! Even more confusingly, there’s also a small chain of chicken shops called Maryland Chicken operating in the United Kingdom. If you find yourself across the pond, just be careful what you order.

7. Tea

It was a British staple.

Tea isn’t so much a drink as an addiction among many Brits, and the Beatles were as fond of a cuppa as the rest of their countrymen. According to a 1965 Playboy article, they always had pots of tea backstage. Plus, in many photos, the band took time to enjoy a brew no matter where they were, even at the north London recording studio, Abbey Road. Yes, the studio with the zebra crossing. Apparently, the Beatles didn’t just drink tea, either. Paul McCartney said that when he and John Lennon were young, they smoked it in a pipe! We’ll stick with milk and two sugar in our tea, though.

8. Milk

Paul may have been messing with us.

It’s not exactly clear how each member of the Beatles took their tea. But given that Paul McCartney once claimed that milk was his favorite drink, we can assume he liked his cuppa pretty milky. But his ex-wife Heather Mills wasn’t kidding in 2007 when she slammed dairy-drinkers for harming the planet. Mills recommended we all try… rat milk instead. We wonder how McCartney felt about that.

9. Baked Beans

In February of 1968, the Beatles, their wives, girlfriends, and in-laws traveled to an ashram in the small Indian town of Rishikesh. They wanted to study the ancient Indian practice of transcendental meditation with spiritual leader Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Ringo Starr was seriously ill as a child, though. So according to Pattie Boyd, he had quite a delicate stomach and couldn’t tolerate onions, garlic, or heavy spices, which were all common ingredients in Indian food. To avoid all the strong flavors, Starr brought his own supply of Heinz baked beans to India. He and his then-wife, Maureen, left after two weeks. Boyd joked that the couple departed because Starr was sick of beans!

10. Curry

While Ringo Starr struggled with Indian food, John Lennon loved it. At least, he loved the British version of Indian food. In a Q&A, Lennon even listed curry and jelly as his favorite foods. But technically, curry isn’t Indian; it’s an Anglicized attempt to put a name to many different spice combinations. Although Lennon and his second wife Yoko Ono sometimes went on fad diets, he couldn’t resist curry. For example, according to one radio interview, Lennon finished up a 10-day rice-only diet with a curry and a milkshake. He said it was “like having every drug [he] ever touched.”

11. Spaghetti

After their debut album propelled them to fame in the United Kingdom and in the United States, the Beatles spent the next few years touring the world. They played in Britain, America, and Europe and had multiple shows at the Teatro Adriano in Piazza Cavour, Rome, in June of 1965. Although the media followed the band around, none of the shows was more than half full! This was the only time the whole group made it to the Italian capital; they stopped touring altogether after 1966. But at least they got to try out the authentic spaghetti while they were in town.

12. Ice Cream

Fans screamed for the Beatles; the Beatles screamed for ice cream.

Even with their hectic tour schedule, the Beatles could find time for a sweet treat. A reporter who hung out with the band said that after playing to 60,000 people at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, in 1964, the singers wanted to experience a traditional American ice cream parlor like the ones they saw in movies. Their manager, Brian Epstein, arranged for them to go to Margie’s Candies, which opened in 1921 and still has two locations today.

13. Jelly Babies

George Harrison’s candy of choice doubled as a missile.

As we mentioned, interviewers and fans loved learning what the Beatles liked to eat. But when George Harrison casually mentioned that he enjoyed Jelly Babies — dense and chewy fruit-flavored British sweets shaped like tiny people — he didn’t realize how fans would react.

The band was in America at the time, and the day after he made that comment, people who came to the show took to throwing jelly beans (the candy most similar to Jelly Babies) onto the stage. According to an annoyed Harrison, “To make matters worse, [the Beatles] were on a circular stage, so they hit us from all sides. Imagine waves of rock-hard little bullets raining down on your from the sky.” Fortunately, more thoughtful fans also sent him packages of the sweets.

14. Apples

When the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, passed in 1967, the band reorganized themselves, something they hadn’t done since he took control in 1961. So, in 1968, they set up Apple Corps (better known as Apple Records) to make sure they controlled their own financial and creative interests. Patti Boyd wrote that it was mainly a record company, but there were also departments that looked after the Beatles’ book, film, and TV projects. She said Paul McCartney came up with the name; it was a play on apple cores! Apparently, though, he was very annoyed when no one got the pun. The band even sued Apple Computer over the name in 1978, but both companies eventually settled.

15. Chicken

It was their onstage snack.

Okay, technically the band in this photo didn’t call themselves the Beatles. Before they landed on that name, the group was called the Quarrymen and then the Silver Beetles. In fact, this photo includes a teenage John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and the original drummer Pete Best, who was replaced by Ringo Starr in 1962. Back in the early days, before they met legendary manager and mastermind Brian Epstein in 1961, the band was hardly clean-cut and worldly. Apparently, they wore leather jackets and used to smoke and swear onstage. They also ate chicken in between songs!

16. Dark Horse Lentil Soup

No horses were involved.

While Ringo Starr’s entry in Mary Frampton’s Rock and Roll Cookbook wasn’t so much a recipe as a set of driving directions, George Harrison did supply a recipe for a delicious-sounding vegetarian soup that was clearly influenced by his time in India. The dark horse lentil soup had many flavorful additions, including chili, cumin, green peppers, and tomatoes. There was garlic too, so Starr likely didn’t try this one.

17. Home-Cooked Food

George Harrison wasn’t the only one who appreciated a home-cooked meal. In 1963, Paul McCartney moved in with his girlfriend and future fiancée Jane Asher and the rest of her family. Previously, all of the Beatles shared an apartment (or flat, as the Brits say) in London’s Mayfair. But McCartney seemed to long for cozy comforts and the meals Mrs. Asher made for the family every night. Home cooking was also important with his first wife, Linda. The pair wrote a song called “Eat at Home” in 1970, but according to McCartney, he wasn’t exactly talking about sitting around the dinner table.

18. Bread

Mrs. Asher wasn’t the only home cook.

In 1975, John Lennon took a break from his post-Beatles music career to become a stay-at-home dad with his and Yoko Ono’s son Sean, who was born in October that year. While embracing his domestic side, Lennon discovered a passion for baking bread. In 1980, he told a Playboy writer he took a Polaroid photo of the first loaf he ever made (Instagram bakers will relate hard to this), comparing it to making an album in an afternoon. After a while, he cooked loaves for everyone, including his employees.

19. Honey

How much honey the Beatles ate is a mystery, but they sure loved singing about it. A survey which analyzed over 1,800 recordings the Beatles members made as a band and in their respective solo careers between 1961 and 2001 looked at which foods appeared most often in the lyrics. The report found that honey was the winner. Unsurprisingly, the number one drink was tea. And over a three-month time span, in 1967 alone, they recorded five songs that referenced the Brits’ favorite drink.

20. Veggie Burgers

They went from eating beef to having beef with meat-eaters.

Paul McCartney and his first wife, Linda, went vegetarian in the ’70s, supposedly after watching lambs frolic on their farm. There weren’t many non-meat options available, though. So in 1989, Linda published a vegetarian cookbook. Two years later, she established her own food brand, selling veggie pies, sausages, and burgers. Although Linda sadly passed in 1998, her food is still sold today, and McCartney still promotes vegetarianism for ethical and environmental reasons.

It’s been over 55 years since Beatlemania first started. While the band is never getting back together, we can raise a cup of tea in their honor.

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