History, as we most commonly learn it, is a grand narrative of titanic events and giant figures battles, treaties, and discoveries. We learn about kings and queens, scientists and revolutionaries, but we don’t often sit back and think about the everyday, intriguing details of their daily lives. It’s those everyday, human moments such as what they ate that bring the past to life and make it somehow familiar.
We might not relate to commanding an army or crafting a philosophical theory, but everyone eats. That simple act connects us across centuries. Still, as you’re about to see, the food habits of some of history’s most brilliant minds were anything but normal. From ancient thinkers who feared beans to tech moguls who turned orange, these strange food choices tell us something about the people behind the legacy. Let’s dig in.
1. Pythagoras – The Bean-Hating Mathematician
Pythagoras was not only famous for right-angled triangles. He also strongly believed beans contained human souls. For him, legumes were not only food but a spiritual threat. So strong was his opposition that walking through a field of beans could induce outright panic.
His disciples were commanded to shun beans altogether. One legend has it that he even died because of it rushing headlong towards death instead of fleeing through a field of beans when chased, rather than break his conviction. Myth or fact, that kind of devotion makes his anti-bean policy one of history’s strangest food preferences.
2. Charles Darwin – Gourmet Gone Wild
Prior to Darwin’s becoming the father of evolution, he was a college student living on the animal kingdom. A member of Cambridge’s “Gourmet Club,” he dined on foreign game hawks, armadillos, iguanas more out of curiosity than appetite.
His Beagle voyage didn’t dissuade him. Even Galápagos tortoises arrived at the table. Darwin famously referred to the meat of an owl as “indescribable,” which is as polite as it gets when a dish is seriously wrong.
3. Nikola Tesla – Crackers, Milk, and OCD
Tesla’s meals were as controlled as his inventions. He stuck to a rigid diet of warm milk, plain crackers, and overcooked vegetables no seasoning, no surprises. He believed simplicity cleared the mind.
His obsessive routines extended to the dinner table: specific napkin counts, calculated silverware placement, and no tolerance for deviation. In a world powered by his imagination, celery sticks were as wild as it got.
4. Steve Jobs – Fruitarian Glow-Up
Jobs would go weeks surviving on apples alone. Then there were the carrots. His rigid fruit diets were predicated on a notion that they would cleanse his body and clarify his thinking.
Soon, the carrots colored his skin orange bright, unmistakable orange. Friends urged him to eat more normal meals, but he remained true to his minimalist creed. His diet was an extreme manifestation of the same simplicity he applied to Apple’s products.
5. Howard Hughes – Germaphobic Diet Disaster
Howard Hughes was not merely quirky his germ phobia dictated his life. Food was swathed in multiple layers of protection, sterilized to ridiculous levels, and left untouched by paranoia. Soup was the new favorite less danger, fewer textures. Mashed potatoes? Too capricious. If a server sneezed within a hundred miles, the whole meal would be considered tainted. Eating, to him, was about evading intangibles, not savoring food.
6. Benjamin Franklin – Air Baths and Toast
Franklin would sit naked in his bedroom before breakfast, believing “air baths” stimulated circulation. After refreshing himself, he’d have a simple breakfast toast, milk, perhaps some wine and introspect on life’s serious questions.
He believed in moderation in almost everything, but not apparently in temperature exposure or public nudity. It’s an offbeat glimpse of life that reminds us even founding fathers had their eccentric habits.
7. Lord Byron – Vinegar and Crackers
Afraid to put on weight, Byron took to a harsh regimen: vinegar water, toast, and misery. He made thinness a religion and boasted of getting by on tea and misery.
Digestive problems dogged him no wonder with the vinegar overload but he sported them as a badge. He used less of a health strategy than a poetic act of self-mortification, making meals another exercise in Romantic suffering.
8. Elizabeth I – Sugar-Addicted Monarch
Elizabeth, I adored sugar. She used it to clean her teeth and munched on sweet pastes. Her sweet addiction resulted in blackened teeth, which artists attempted to conceal in paintings.
By today’s standards, she was essentially constructed of dessert. Her tooth rot became part of her public persona a strong queen fighting a not-so-secret war with sugar, one molar at a time.
9. Caligula – Gold-Plated Glutton
Caligula’s banquets weren’t about food they were exhibitions of excess and madness. He served gold bread (yes, real gold), dined with animals, and once promoted his horse to senator.
These are ridiculous and perilously extravagant spectacles. Food wasn’t something people ate to fill their bellies it was an emperor’s move to power, an extension of a ruler’s fall into decadence and madness.
10. Henry VIII – Turkey-Legged Tyrant
Henry VIII ate like he had no restraint. His table was piled high with meat, pies, and beer. He devoured meals with his hands and threw bones onto the floor.
He hated sweets and liked feasts best when he could make his own rules. His growing waistline was the best evidence of his unbridled appetite and his appetite for control knew no bounds in each bite.
11. Queen Victoria – Meat Marathoner
Victoria was not noted for patience over meals. Her formal dinners featured as many as nine meat courses, but she devoured them in a flash more often finishing all of them within 30 minutes.
Court rules meant no one could keep eating after she stopped. Courtiers often left hungry, their food half-finished, victims of royal speed-eating. Dining with Victoria meant you’d better chew fast or go home hungry.
12. Salvador Dalí – Lobster on the Loose
Dalí’s dinner parties were surreal spectacles. Think live lobsters on the table, taxidermy centerpieces, and guests in costume. For him, food was performance art.
His cookbook, Les Dîners de Gala, contained aphrodisiacs and optical illusions. Meals weren’t meals neither were they performances. They were dreamlike, salacious experiences where reality and fantasy blurred.
13. Marquis de Sade – Indulgence Overload
Food and debauchery went hand in hand at de Sade’s table. His parties combined oysters and chocolate with scandalous activity, reducing meals to ritualized anarchy.
He practiced unbridled hedonism. Eating wasn’t about sustenance for him, it was about pushing limits, a reflection of his overall fixation with liberty and mastery.
14. Aleister Crowley – Ritual Meals of Madness
Crowley viewed food as a magical artifact. He devoured “soulfully,” consuming exotic meats and odd spices in rituals that he felt opened doors to the spirit world. Some urban legends propose even more creepy ingredients.
Whether or not the claims are true, Crowley approached eating as a part of his occult practice. The outcome was less healthy and more disturbing, becoming border-line between ritual and dangerous behavior.
Ultimately, these bizarre diets weren’t about being a quirk, they were about expression of identity. Whether a bean-fearing frolic or a gold-plated power trip, each individual utilized food as a way to reflect deeper beliefs, ordeals, or simply wild random craziness.
So the next time you grab an odd snack or attempt an unusual diet, keep in mind: the past is littered with individuals who consumed far more unusual foods and somehow, they made their mark.
