Many people have what we might call a healthy appetite, but as long as you can restrain yourself, there’s nothing wrong with indulging every now and again. However, these next characters didn’t even know the meaning of the word “restraint.” They gave into their greed and gluttony every chance they had.
Why 10 Men Who Devoured Anything Capture Our Imagination
From gilded rail tycoons to ancient monarchs, the sheer magnitude of their consumption makes history taste a little stranger. Below, we rank the most ravenous eaters ever recorded, each more outrageous than the last.
10 Diamond Jim Brady
To sample life’s tastiest offerings, you need a fat wallet as well as a fat belly. James Buchanan Brady, the American railroad magnate, fit that requirement perfectly. After building a fortune with his rail‑supplies empire, Brady became famed for two passions: dazzling jewels (hence the nickname) and prodigious meals.
Over the years, Brady’s appetite grew into near‑mythic proportions. His breakfast alone featured pancakes, muffins, grits, bread, eggs, chops, steaks, fried potatoes, and whole pitchers of orange juice. A light snack followed – dozens of clams – before lunch, where clams reappeared alongside lobsters, crabs, beef, and pie. An afternoon bite kept the momentum, and dinner, the day’s grandest affair, served steak, dozens of oysters, a dozen crabs, half a dozen lobsters, soup, and for dessert, several pounds of bonbons and a tray of pastries.
Various accounts tweak the menu but never the staggering quantities. Though some exaggeration is likely—few mammals could ingest such volumes—Brady’s hunger was undeniably voracious. New York restaurateur George Rector summed it up: “He was the best 25 customers I ever had.”
9 Elvis Presley
Although Elvis is celebrated for his music, he was also a notorious glutton. In his later years, the king of rock ’n’ roll’s diet, combined with drug use, took a heavy toll.
Elvis adored fatty foods, especially the iconic peanut‑butter‑and‑banana sandwich, fried in butter for extra decadence. This creation became known worldwide as “the Elvis.”
One Denver eatery elevated the sandwich into a “Fool’s Gold” masterpiece—an entire Italian loaf layered with peanut butter, jelly, and a pound of bacon—priced at $50 in the 1970s.
One night, craving this indulgence, Elvis chartered his private jet, whisking his entourage from Memphis to Denver just to devour the “Fool’s Gold.” The extravagant food run reportedly cost around $16,000.
8 Henry VIII
Arguably the most famous glutton in history, Henry VIII supposedly spent most of his time at the dinner table, occasionally pausing his feasting to rule England and marry another wife. But is this fact or myth?
Henry indeed loved food, yet in his youth he was active—hunting, jousting, dancing, wrestling—so he stayed fit despite his indulgences. After a jousting accident left him crippled, his exercise ceased, but his appetite persisted, leading to the rotund monarch remembered today. Later in life his waist allegedly measured a staggering 1.4 meters (4.5 ft).
When Henry dined, his entire court ate alongside him. He became famed for throwing opulent banquets attended by hundreds. The kitchen at Hampton Court Palace had to expand to 55 rooms to accommodate these feasts, staffed by over 200 cooks preparing sumptuous 14‑course meals for the king and his guests.
7 Elagabalus
Elagabalus was one of the worst rulers ancient Rome ever saw. He ruled only four years, from age 14 to 18, before the Senate, the Roman people, and even his own Praetorian Guard assassinated him and his mother, casting his body into the Tiber.
During his brief reign, Elagabalus indulged in every excess imaginable, inventing new ways to infuriate Romans. He introduced the worship of a Syrian sun god, appointed himself high priest, and engaged in depraved sexual behavior, preferring men and often dressing as a woman to fulfill his fantasies.
His lavish feasts displayed his gluttony: guests reclined on silver beds while curly‑haired boys fanned perfume. The menu featured peacock tongues, sow’s breasts with truffles, dormice baked in poppies, African snails, sea wolves, and live thrushes stuffed inside a cooked pig. He also adored brains—an assortment from thrushes, peacocks, parakeets, and pheasants appeared at every meal.
6 Siderophagus
An 18th‑century showman known as Siderophagus (“the Eater of Iron”) claimed he could consume and digest any iron presented to him. Audiences were encouraged to bring keys, pokers, bolts, and other metal objects.
Show business ran in the family; his wife performed a parallel act, drinking incredibly toxic liquids, specializing in aqua fortis (nitric acid). Together they toured, even offering a “lighter” version for poorer crowds—Siderophagus chewed small iron items like wires and needles, while his wife drank weak liquors and wine.
It’s uncertain how genuine their feats were. They rarely stayed in one city long, and while the wife likely never actually drank aqua fortis (the acid would be lethal), the wire‑chewing segment seems plausible. Their performances blended spectacle with skepticism.
5 Francis Battalia
Francis Battalia would have been an average, unassuming person were it not for one very odd craving—stones.
In the late 18th century, Battalia attracted medical professionals and skeptics alike. Attendees witnessed him gulp down plates full of rocks and gravel, then shake violently so the audience could hear the stones rattling inside his stomach.
Advertisements claimed his stone‑eating habit began in childhood, with his wet‑nurse allegedly mixing pebbles into his gruel. Though likely apocryphal, Battalia faced competition from another “Stone Eater” who chewed pebbles loudly. A doctor named Bulwer spent 24 hours observing Battalia, confirming the stone consumption and noting his waste resembled a sandy, crumbled substance.
4 M. Dufour
Not much is known about the Frenchman M. Dufour, a contemporary of Battalia who turned his gluttony into a successful showcase—though his menu rarely featured stones.
His most famed performance occurred in 1792 at a banquet staged solely for him, drawing a packed house eager to witness his gastronomic prowess. He began with asps boiled in oil served alongside a salad of pricks and thistles. The entrée parade continued with bat, owl, rat, mole, and tortoise. For dessert, Dufour delighted the crowd with a dish of toads mixed with spiders, caterpillars, flies, and crickets.
To cap the evening, Dufour performed a rare encore: he swallowed every candle on the tables—some still lit—and promptly washed them down with brandy, turning a simple lighting fixture into a daring culinary stunt.
3 Thomas Eclin
Thomas Eclin never achieved the fame of Dufour or Battalia. Contemporary accounts described him as an imbecile Irishman, yet “remarkable for his vivacity and drollery in the low way.”
His ambitions were modest; as a drunk, he was content with ample gin and tobacco. To sustain his habit, he performed any act that would draw a paying crowd, often eating a wide array of unpleasant things. He specialized in eating live animals—cats in particular—though he would seize any financial opportunity that presented itself.
One notorious stunt saw him plunge into the freezing Thames, further cementing his reputation as a bizarre entertainer willing to endure extreme discomfort for a few coins.
2 The Great Eater Of Kent
With a moniker like that, you should expect great things from Nicholas Wood.
The 16th‑century Englishman built a career on his gluttony, becoming famous throughout England and performing at private parties for the elite. Some gatherings were devoted entirely to him. Poet John Taylor even penned a poem titled “The Great Eater of Kent, or Part of the Admirable Teeth and Stomach Exploits of Nicholas Wood.”
At an event hosted by Sir Warham St. Ledger at Leeds Castle, Wood reportedly ate a dinner fit for eight men. At Lord Wotton’s party, he consumed two dozen rabbits. Taylor first spotted the Great Eater devouring everything at an inn in Kent, then convinced Wood to travel to London to attract larger crowds. Wood initially agreed, but upon arrival in London, he got cold feet—embarrassed, tricked, and mocked in the past, he feared further ridicule. He eventually vanished without a trace, never to be heard from again.
1 Antoine Langulet
Everyone on this list had ravenous appetites, but they all pale in comparison to 19th‑century Frenchman Antoine Langulet. His preferred menu was so repulsive it landed him in an asylum for the criminally insane.
By his own admission, Langulet had been accustomed to eating disgusting things since childhood—not out of necessity, but because he genuinely enjoyed the taste. Rotten meat, taken straight from putrid carcasses, was his favorite.
As an adult, he stayed locked inside during the day, roaming Paris’s sewers and gutters at night to scavenge offal and filthy meat. He befriended horse knackers to obtain the bodies of sickly horses slated for disposal.
Although vile, Langulet might have avoided incarceration had he not turned to cemeteries for sustenance. He initially resisted, but eventually began digging up bodies, feasting on intestines on the spot, stuffing as much as possible into his pockets for later consumption, then moving on.
+ Erysichthon Of Thessaly
Erysichthon might have been a mythological Greek figure, but an appetite so legendary deserves special attention. We know of his exploits from one of the greatest Roman poets, Ovid.
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Erysichthon is a Thessalian king who showed little regard for the gods. He once cut down a sacred oak belonging to Ceres, the goddess of agriculture and fertility. The tree housed strings of wool and wreaths of flowers—symbols of every prayer Ceres had granted.
Erysichthon forced his men to chop down the tree; when they refused, he took an axe himself and felled it, inadvertently killing a dryad. With her dying breath, she cursed him. As punishment, Ceres commanded Famine to reside inside the king, granting him an insatiable hunger that no amount of food could satisfy.
Even though he was wealthy, Erysichthon sold all his possessions for food, eventually even selling his daughter into slavery. Yet the hunger only grew. In desperation, he began gnawing at his own limbs, feeding little by little on his own body until his demise.