5 Historical Gluttons Who Ate Their Way Into the Afterlife
We’ve all eaten a little too much. Unless you’re one of those perfect little angels out there who’s never exceeded their caloric recommendations. In which case, you’re probably too busy climbing Everest to read this article.
But for those of us whose brains receive the usual amount of joy from going a little overboard, we all know a meal or two that have felt like they tested the limits of our intestinal lining. On occasion, though, people have not only found that limit, but pushed through it with fatal results.
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Here are five historical figures who ate themselves to death…
King Adolf Frederick
In 1771, the Swedish King Adolf Frederick was preparing for the food-unfriendly month of Lent with a bit of a gorge. He attacked a prepared feast with gusto, and put down a positively belt-busting amount of food. Lobster, caviar, sauerkraut and boiled meats are just a few of the treats he packed into his kingly gut over the course of a single meal.
None of them were the dish that did the deed, however. That dishonor belongs to his ill-advised addition of dessert. He tossed back a couple glasses of champagne, and decided that what the meal really needed was a bit of sweetness to round it all out. In particular, his favorite pastry: semlas, or buns stuffed with cream that Adolf preferred served in a soup of raisins, cinnamon and milk.
The chef must have outdone themselves that day, because Adolf wasn’t able to resist having any less than 14 servings of the aforementioned semlas, and no amount of stomach Tetris was able to make that work. He died that night of, well, his body trying to handle the whole grocery store aisle he’d just shoved in it.
Pope Paul II
If one of your preferred treats is fresh fruit, you know that you’ve got to get it while the getting’s good. Unless you want to be gritting your teeth through less-than-ripe, out-of-season servings of nature’s candy, you’re limited to certain parts of the year to eat the best version of said food.
For Pope Paul II, his go-to natural sweet treat was cantaloupe. I’m a fan of the ‘loupe myself, and can’t fault him for putting down a good portion of a particularly fine melon, but I think I’d stop myself after completing an entire fruit. He, reportedly, did not, and made what would turn out to be the mortal mistake of eating two entire cantaloupes in quick succession. Shortly after his two-gourd gorge, he would pass away — at least according to legend.
Though that’s still the second most outrageous claim for his cause of death, and one he probably prefers over the other: sodomy.
King Henry I
Now, I wouldn’t say either of the two fatal meals above were worth it — not by a long shot. At the same time, I’m not going to act like they don’t sound delicious. Pastries? Fresh fruit? I can follow the base instincts here. In the case of the dish that ended King Henry I, however, I don’t think it’s something I’d eat more than a bite of, much less enough of to cause a medical episode.
His number one meal was lamprey pie. If you’re unfamiliar with the lamprey, imagine an eel-sized leech, and you’re pretty close. A long body made of cartilage with concentric rings of sharp teeth at one end, they bring to mind Demogorgon babies more than a dinner bell. Even back then, King Henry was advised to lower his lamprey pie intake by doctors. It was advice he ignored, until one particularly large lamprey binge brought him to an early grave, likely due to food poisoning.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Writer William Makepeace Thackeray’s official cause of death is a stroke. He didn’t slump over at a dinner table either, so establishing a definitive link between dining and death isn’t necessarily a slam dunk. However, the fact was that he was overwhelmingly known as a glutton without the cardiovascular activity to back it up makes these two dots pretty easy to connect. Upon returning home from one of his many king-sized dinners out, he fell dead of a stroke, and probably, given his eating habits, clutching both his head and his stomach.
Basil Brown
Admittedly, Basil Brown might not be a figure of history, but the peculiar way he managed to meet his maker should get him in the history books, if you ask me.
Outside of lamprey pie, which I don’t have specific nutrition information for, all of the final meals in this article aren’t exactly heart-healthy. Brown, however, punched his ticket before the train was set to leave the station due to too many vitamins. He was said to be a health-food enthusiast, and beyond that, an absolute freak for carrot juice. In his final days, he was putting down a gallon of carrot juice a day, supplemented with an entirely batshit amount of vitamin A, which, despite living in the realm of responsible eating, brought on the same ailment that takes down a lifelong alcoholic: cirrhosis of the liver.
And so, in 1974, they found poor Brown unresponsive and dead by carrot.