Living in a culture saturated with celebrity coverage, it's normal for us to know the diets of people who live thousands of miles away. The downside of this lifestyle is we neglect obsessing over the minute details of historical celebrities who left their mark on culture long before Entertainment Tonight began to prep the masses for rational discourse on Anna Nicole. To rectify this inequity, I will give a run-through of the eating habits of some of history's most memorable characters.
*Alexander Pope*
One of the most influential poets and thinkers of the 17th century, Alexander Pope was an avid vegetarian.
Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our kitchens sprinkled with blood and abounding with the cries of expiring victims or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up here and there,"" he wrote, in reference to his eating habits, though some scholars believe this sentence was a lost epilogue to his essay on ""The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.""
His vegetarianism doesn't gel particularly well with the sentiment of his famous poem ""An Essay on Man,"" however, which posits that whatever is, is right, because God has a plan. This is still the line of reasoning you'll encounter when devout Christians realize they have chlamydia or discover their lunchmeat has gone bad. Under Pope's own logic, eating beef, making glue out of horses or allowing Rachael Ray to exist are all things we must accept, because God allowed the words ""yum-o"" to mar the Food Network for a reason, albeit one beyond our understanding.
*Jesus Christ*
Next is someone whose penchant for seafood was known from Galilee to Judea. Remember the part in the Bible where JC appears to the disciples post-crucifixion and asks for something to eat? What the disciples give him is one of the most-telling but often ignored parts of the Bible. They give him baked fish, dude! Consider: These are Jesus' best buds, guys he's lived with every day for the past few years. So you know when he surprises the gang by coming back from the dead, they're not going to feed him the Mediterranean equivalent of leftover Domino's - they're going to give the guy exactly what he craves. The fact that they give him baked fish proves that it's at least in his top five favorite meals.
*Adolf Hitler *
The vegetarianism of Adolf Hitler is hotly disputed, with PETA people so desperate to distance their beliefs from one of history's greatest schlemiels that they come up with a variety of cock-eyed reasons why he wasn't a vegetarian. Some say his personal physician gave him pills that included animal byproducts, and others adamantly argue that various rogue chefs tried to slip animal fat or bone marrow into the Fuhrer's meals.
Regardless of whether Hitler was an unwitting carnivore, it's clear the guy made a public point of his vegetarianism, often recounting graphic stories of slaughterhouses to meat-eaters during dinnertime. But when dessert came, Adolf knew how to turn those frowns upside down. According to a 1937 article in the New York Times called ""Where Hitler Dreams and Plans,"" Hitler was ""outspoken about having a sweet tooth and loves confectionery, especially chocolates."" It's good to know there's something that can bring everyone together, regardless of century, diet or fetish for murdering millions.
There are a lot of other historical figures who ate food, but we'll leave it at that for now. Hopefully this reminds you that interesting celebrity details predate the first appearance of Ms. Pac-Man.
Know the food gossip on another historical figure? E-mail Joe at Jblynch@wisc.edu.
