Eating the Elvis Presley Way

David Adler Blake Publishing

There are more than 400 books about Elvis Presley. There are books about his music, his film, his life, his death, his religion - and his food. There is the Presley Family Cookbook, The Elvis Presley Cookbook, Elvis's Favourite Recipes, and now Eating the Elvis Presley Way. What makes this book different? To begin with, this is not a cookbook. You can't find recipes here, but this book is the story of Elvis' life. It is the story of the food that he ate and the people who cooked it for him. And an extremely interesting life it was, too.

The food in the first two or three chapters is quite normal - baby food, boring school dinners, army meals when he was doing his military service, that sort of thing. But later, when Elvis was rich and famous, it is a very different story. With all the money in the world, Elvis chose to eat like a child. Elvis got up late and his first meal of the day was breakfast at five o'clock in the afternoon : bacon and eggs, or sausage and eggs. After that, it was snack : pizza and hot dogs, hamburgers and fries, chocolate and cakes - all day and every day. Elvis even had a fridge in his bedroom for his favourite snacks.

As the years passed, Elvis' eating problems became really serious. One day, when Elvis was going to the White House to meet the President, he was feeling a bit hungry and ate 250g of chocolate and then 12 donuts in his taxi. Another time, he ordered a large ice cream for breakfast. He ate it quickly, ordered a second, a third, a fourth and a fifth before falling asleep again. Elvis' last meal before he died was four scoops of ice cream with six chocolate cookies.

Elvis was an extremely unhappy man. His food and the drugs that he took made him feel good, but killed him in the end. It's a fairly sad story, but a fascinating one, too.

Source : IALF doc. / en.wikipedia.org