To fuel himself, he imbibed as many as 50 cups of coffee a day. Balzac also dabbled with “a horrible, rather brutal method” which involved eating pure coffee grounds on an empty stomach. When he did this, he wrote, “Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages.”

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Marlon Brando had difficulties with his weight throughout his life, veering between crash diets and gorging sprees. Early in his career, he was known to eat peanut butter by the jarful, boxes of cinnamon buns and huge breakfasts consisting of cornflakes, sausages, eggs, bananas and cream, and pancakes drenched in maple syrup. He would devour up to six hotdogs at a time in late-night feasts at Pink’s in Hollywood. Defying attempts by work colleagues and loved ones to regulate his diet, he would break refrigerator locks at night, flee film sets with giant tubs of ice-cream and enlist friends to throw burger bags over the gates of his Mulholland Drive estate.

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“I was on one of my fruitarian diets [and] had just come back from the apple farm.” This is Steve Jobs explaining the origins of the Apple company name to biographer Walter Isaacson and revealing something of his eating habits in the process. Jobs was a vegan for most of his adult life, dabbled with the even more restrictive fruitarian diet* and would spend weeks at a time eating only one or two foods, such as apples or carrots. (He believed his diet neutralised body odour and meant that he didn’t need to wash regularly or wear deodorant, though his co-workers believed otherwise.) Sometimes Jobs stopped eating entirely, savouring the “euphoria and ecstasy” of fasting, though he was also acutely appreciative of a good avocado. “He believed that great harvests came from arid sources, pleasure from restraint,” noted his daughter Lisa.

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Henry David Thoreau professed little enthusiasm for food in general. “The wonder is how … you and I can live this slimy, beastly life, eating and drinking,” he wrote. He avoided meat and alcohol. Coffee and tea were dangerous temptations. Salt he regarded as “that grossest of groceries”. Cranberry-pickers were like butchers who “rake the tongues of bison out of the prairie grass”. Even water was an indulgence he would gladly have shunned were he able to live without it.