43

This ABC Science article by Dr Karl S. Kruszelnicki claims

Before he died, Elvis was eating about 100,000 calories per day!

...

The basic element of Elvis' daily food intake was a 30-cm long bread roll, stuffed with bacon, peanut butter and strawberry jam. Each one had 42,000 calories, and in his final days, he ate two of them per day, together with little midnight snacks of hamburgers and deep-fried white bread.

That seems pretty extreme. I remember hearing that Michael Phelps was only eating ~12k when he was at his prime, and I read that winners of the Nathans Hot Dog Eating Contest only eat on the scale of 25k. To me this sounds like an error.

Was Elvis consuming 100k (dietary) calories per day towards the end of his life?

Oddthinking
  • 140,378
  • 46
  • 548
  • 638
David says Reinstate Monica
  • 3,468
  • 4
  • 22
  • 28
  • 49
    By way of comparison, 100 000 calories are equivalent to about 14 kg butter. –  Jan 09 '17 at 01:06
  • 1
    @Loong That's what I was about to say: "Only if he was eating butter sticks all day long." –  Jan 09 '17 at 03:01
  • 7
    Just a thought, but perhaps there was a miscommunication error along the way - kilojoules are the metric measure equivalent to Calories (I also notice a capitalisation issue - dietary Calories should be capitalised, because they're actually kilocalories), 1 Cal is about 4.2 kJ. So 42,000 kJ would be about 10,000 Calories, a far more plausible number. Dr Kruszelnicki (Australia's equivalent of Bill Nye, roughly speaking) probably got a wire crossed when reading about it, because Australia uses both kJ and Cal when talking about diets. (and I now see Oddthinking had the same thought) – Glen O Jan 09 '17 at 12:49
  • 1
    @Loong Also equivalent to 14 kg of fat tissue. (Butter and body fat tissue contain about the same ratio of water and fat) He would literally have gained 100 kg (220 lbs) a week. – JollyJoker Jan 09 '17 at 12:56
  • 2
    Ah so this is why a local burger joint has "the Elvis", burger topped with peanut butter, mayo, bacon. ...gross – DasBeasto Jan 09 '17 at 14:52
  • 2
    I'm not having any luck finding concrete numbers, but there logically has to be an upper limit to the amount of food the human digestive system can physically process per day, and I'd bet it is _nowhere near_ 100,000 kcal/day worth. (Vague memory of seeing ~8,000 kcal/day as a practical limit on a bodybuilding forum somewhere, but that's not exactly a reliable source.) – zwol Jan 09 '17 at 19:23
  • You would need to keep eating [at this rate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw8iljkD1So) for about 6 hours to get your 100,000 Kcal into your stomach. – Count Iblis Jan 10 '17 at 00:19
  • I tweeted Dr Karl. His [reply](https://twitter.com/DoctorKarl/status/820583881892122624), ready to admit a mistake, asks for "hard data". – Mark Hurd Jan 15 '17 at 12:20

1 Answers1

61

That article is silly.

For better information see A look at Elvis Presley's insane food habits on the anniversary of his death, which includes a video interview with Elvis's personal cook Mary Jenkins Langston.

The bread roll stuffed with bacon, peanut butter and jelly was 8,000 Calories, not 42,000. It is the infamous Fool's Gold Loaf.

enter image description here

Other sources say 6,067 calories. See Food Challenge: Fool's Gold Sandwich 6067 Calories (Bill Elljob attempts to eat it on youtube video).

DavePhD
  • 103,432
  • 24
  • 436
  • 464
  • 1
    I also heard he would travel across the country in his private plane to his favorite diner to order this. –  Jan 09 '17 at 03:02
  • 24
    +1. It is unlike Dr Karl to publish nonsense. I wonder if this was a metric conversion error. 8,000 kcal = ~33,000 kilojoules. Add in the hamburgers and fried bread, and you might approach 100,000 kJ. – Oddthinking Jan 09 '17 at 04:09
  • 8
    @Oddthinking Americans use kcal too, we just call them calories – TheEnvironmentalist Jan 09 '17 at 06:08
  • 16
    @TheEnvironmentalist Us Europeans use kcal, write kcal, but _say_ calories. – orlp Jan 09 '17 at 08:55
  • 13
    @TheEnvironmentalist: Yes, Americans use kcals, weirdly call them Calories (often with a capital C, to to indicate "big Calories"). Wikipedia calls it kcal, but its source calls it calories. Australia has been transitioning to metric for about 45 years, so we talk about something being "high in calories", but tend to work in kilojoules (YMMV). Dr Karl is Australian. Hence the opportunity for a conversion error. – Oddthinking Jan 09 '17 at 09:01
  • 3
    @Oddthinking In the UK we also have this weird habit.. I've even seen different food packacing use different ways of writing it. Some will say "X kcal", others with say "X Cal", and others will say "X,000 calories".. very frustrating. – James T Jan 09 '17 at 09:06
  • @orlp Unless in official documents, where the EU mandates that we must use kilojoule as a unit (also on food labels you must not use a larger font for the number of kcal than for the kJ). –  Jan 09 '17 at 10:33
  • 1
    FYI - cal, kcal are not metric units, it's related to water and its termocapacity. Calories are used in metric countries same as in imperial. It would be hard to market anything with "~4.2 more of the evil number". – Hurda Jan 09 '17 at 11:18
  • 7
    @Oddthinking I think he just ate the Fool's Gold Loaf one time, February 1st, 1976. He flew from Graceland to Denver, about 1000 miles, with Denver law-enforcement friends, just to eat it. The owner of the Colorado Mine Company brought 22 loaves to the airport. They all ate in the airport and flew back home. No evidence he ate these things regularly. What he really ate were normal size peanut butter and banana sandwiches (sometimes with bacon). – DavePhD Jan 09 '17 at 13:29
  • 3
    @DavePhD: That's worth adding to the answer as another reason Dr Karl's article was silly. – Oddthinking Jan 09 '17 at 13:33
  • [Junkee](http://junkee.com/heartburn-hotel-eating-like-elvis-in-his-final-days/17350) quotes "What The Great Ate" as saying it was 42,000 calories. Sounds like it might have been Dr Karl's source. – Oddthinking Jan 09 '17 at 13:37
  • @Oddthinking Kruszelnicki's article is from 2002. "What The Great Ate" is 2010. – DavePhD Jan 09 '17 at 13:39
  • Good point. Sorry, hasty conclusion. – Oddthinking Jan 09 '17 at 15:21
  • Still, he ate *two* of those? Daily? Is *that* actually true? – Jared Smith Jan 09 '17 at 17:24
  • @Oddthinking The actual source seems to be "Revealed: the Elvis Presley killer diet" Sunday Times (London), 24th December, 1995, page 3. http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/Off-Topic/acapella-12/1035265- ; http://www.uppercrustindia.com/oldsite/11crust/eleven/feature10.htm – DavePhD Jan 09 '17 at 17:57