The All-Time Favorite Foods Of The Beatles

The Beatles' songs are littered with food references; think "Savoy Truffle," "Glass Onion," "Strawberry Fields Forever," and "Honey Pie," to name just a few. So prolific is The Beatles' apparent interest in food that Martin Lewis recently undertook a study just to examine the number and types of foods mentioned in their song titles and lyrics. Honey was the most popular among them, appearing 14 times.

Not all of the songs The Beatles wrote with food titles were actually direct references to food. Consider the song "Strawberry Fields Forever." While John Lennon may have indeed liked strawberries, the song was named after a boy's orphanage near where he grew up. Honey Pie is a term of endearment, and the real meaning of Glass Onion is still debated today. As John Lennon once told a fan, "All my writing ... has always been for laughs or fun," insinuating there was no meaning behind it at all. 

What we know for a fact about The Beatles' taste in food is that they were British boys to the core; and in the band's early days, their favorite foods included English staples like baked beans, marmite, and a full English breakfast. After their immersion in Indian culture following a trip to India in 1966, John, Paul, George, and Ringo all converted to vegetarianism with varying degrees of success. Today, Beatles Paul and Ringo maintain strict vegetarians diet and are known for promoting healthy, meat-free lifestyles. So let's take a trip back through the years and look at The Beatles' favorite foods, past and present.

John Lennon liked to start his day with a classic English breakfast, proving you can take the boy out of England but not England out of the boy. An English breakfast, better known as a full breakfast or a fry-up in the U.S., consists of bacon, eggs, sausages, beans, tomatoes, chips, and black pudding. May Pang once said, "John had a voracious appetite, which comes as a surprise to many people. We had a tradition every Sunday: At 11:00 a.m. I'd come in with The New York Times, some of the British papers, and coffee (he gave up tea in America because it was decidedly British). I would make a big English breakfast of bacon and eggs, beans on toast with tomatoes, chips, and sometimes black pudding."

To make the perfect English breakfast, brown sausages in a pan (preferably Cumberland or pork to be truly authentic), fry your bacon, sauté mushrooms, and heat the baked beans; when those items are ready, pop some toast under the grill and cook the eggs — poached, fried, or scrambled are all acceptable. Finish with a steaming cup of proper British Yorkshire tea. John sometimes enjoyed black pudding with his fry-up. Black pudding is a type of blood sausage made with pork blood, fat, oats, and various seasonings, stuffed into a sausage casing and fried or grilled. It's a popular part of a full English breakfast but an acquired taste. Consider including hash browns or adding pancakes or waffles for an American spin on it.

In 1966, The Beatles famously traveled to India to study transcendental meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This trip heavily influenced all aspects of their lives going forward, most notably their music. Their spiritual leanings toward Hinduism, which emphasizes nonviolence to all living animals, meant they reconsidered their diets. As a result, all of The Beatles became vegetarian at some point.

John Lennon took this one step further. In a Playboy interview in 1981, he said, "We're mostly macrobiotic, but sometimes I take the family out for a pizza." By the time he died in 1980, Lennon ate a mostly vegetarian and macrobiotic diet. Lennon was ahead of his time, Macrobiotic eating focuses on whole, natural foods with an emphasis on locally grown, seasonal, and organic foods.

To follow Lennon's vegetarian, macrobiotic diet, you need to avoid all animal products and eat non-processed plant-based foods, avoiding refined sugars and dairy. The macrobiotic diet is designed to give you the optimal nutritional intake with a mix of grains, seeds, fruit, and vegetables; while some macrobiotic diets do include fish, Lennon didn't partake of it.

Create the perfect macrobiotic bowl by placing chopped dried seaweed edamame, snap peas, asparagus, broccoli, quinoa, brown rice, mizuna, and carrots in a bowl. Then, cover it with a dressing of sunflower seeds, butter, water, lemon and salt for a crunchy, colorful salad bowl that would have made Lennon proud.

Paul McCartney is probably the most famous vegetarian of all The Beatles. Together with his late wife Linda McCartney, he created the Linda McCartney Foods line back in 1989. Since then, he has stayed true to his vegetarian ethos and avoids all meat. Paul is a pasta fan, often combining it with vegetables and his own meat-free meat alternatives. Sharing his show day food choices with the Meat Free Mondays organization, he said, "Tonight, I'm having a pasta olio — pasta with oil — with little vegetables mixed in. Some broccoli, cauliflower, a bit of carrot, and I think tonight we're going to have a fake 'chicken' patty chopped up into that. So, it's pasta with fake 'chicken' patty and vegetables. Mmm, this is getting me hungry!"

Pasta olio — also known by its full name pasta aglio e olio — is an excellent choice for vegetarians with or without the additional meat substitute; it's a simple Italian dish whose literal translation means pasta with garlic and oil. To make it, cook pasta (traditionally spaghetti, but use any kind you like) in boiling water while sautéing several cloves of garlic in olive oil and add red pepper flakes. When the pasta is ready, drain and add it to the skillet with the garlic and pepper flakes, stir well and season with black pepper and parsley.

The beauty of this simple dish is that, like Paul, you can add different foods and flavors to elevate it; consider grating Parmesan cheese over it, adding vegetables, or (shush, don't tell Paul) bacon pieces.

Brits love a sandwich. After all, it was the Earl of Sandwich who gave our favorite lunchtime snack its name in the 18th century, and Paul McCartney is no exception. Rock bands don't get more quintessentially English than The Beatles, and a sandwich doesn't get more British than a cheese and pickle sandwich. In October 2024, Paul told Meat Free Mondays, that after a show, 'I get on the tour bus, and before we change back into our 'day clothes' I have a margarita to drink, which is always very welcome! And I have a cheese and pickle sandwich with the English type of pickle: Branston pickle."

An authentic British cheese and pickle requires a particular cheese and pickle combo. The cheese should always be a hard type, preferably a mature cheddar, a Red Leicester, or a Wensleydale. For the pickle, McCartney and his fellow Englishmen prefer Branston pickle, a kind of sweet chutney made from vegetables. In a pinch, you could add Piccalilli, otherwise known as mustard pickle, which is a relish made of pickled vegetables and spices.

To make your sandwich, take two slices of any bread, spread one slice thickly with butter, layer slices of cheese, finish with a large dollop of pickle, and cover with your second slice. Simple, satisfying, and good enough for a Beatle.

Any Beatle fan knows that it's impossible to understate the impact that The Beatles' trip to India and their subsequent immersion in Indian culture had on their band. Of all The Beatles, George Harrison delved the most deeply into Indian spirituality, forming a long relationship with sitar guru Ravi Shankar and becoming a practitioner of Hindu beliefs and a follower of Krishna. His devotion to Indian culture had an influence on his eating style — like the other Beatles, Harrison ate a vegetarian diet, but he had a particular love of Indian food, in his biography George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door, George told the author Graeme Thomson that he ate "dishes like dal (lentils), rice, chapati, and curries."

Harrison created an Indian-inspired vegetarian soup recipe that he called dark horse lentil soup. It is described as a hearty soup that combines lentils with spices and vegetables. To make Harrison's lentil soup, gather one red chili, one teaspoon of cumin seeds, two large onions, two chopped cloves of garlic, one cup of lentils, two large tomatoes, two chopped green peppers, one bay leaf, salt, and pepper. Soak the lentils in water, brown the onions and garlic in a pan, add them to the pan along with the remainder of the ingredients, bring them to a boil, and then simmer until the lentils and vegetables are tender.

Like Paul McCartney, George Harrison loved a sandwich but opted for a less traditional option. He famously stated, "I'll just have cheese and lettuce and Marmite sandwich before counting into a recording of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."

Marmite is an iconic British yeast spread with a famously polarizing taste, popularized by the company slogan, "One either loves it or one hates it." It has a very strong, salty taste and is most commonly spread on toast or bread. It is also sometimes dipped into boiled eggs or used as an additive for stew and soups. Marmite isn't nearly as popular stateside, where it competes with the Australian yeast alternative Vegemite, but in the U.K., it is part of the national heritage. It is so beloved that it now appears in chips or crackers, breadsticks, and pasta. Even high-end restaurants now whip it into butter and blend it into burgers.

To make Harrison's cheese lettuce and marmite sandwich, spread two pieces of any bread with a thin layer of butter and an even thinner layer of marmite. Marmite is extremely strong, so make sure to use only a little. Then, place lettuce and slices of cheese with the bread slices and gird your loins for a uniquely British taste experience.

Of all The Beatles, Ringo Starr's favorite foods remain the most unadventurous. As he recently told Jimmy Kimmel, "I have never had a pizza. All the people in the back are going 'what?' Or a curry. I'm allergic to several items and pizza; you dunno what they're putting in it half the time or the curry. So I am pretty strict with myself because it makes me ill immediately" (via Express) Even the Indian immersion didn't change his eating style; he famously took a suitcase full of Heinz baked beans with him.

Baked beans are another British staple, and not just any beans — it has to be Heinz. They've been around since 1901, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a house in the U.K. that doesn't have a tin of beans lurking somewhere in the cupboard. There's even a museum in London entirely dedicated to the glorious tomatoey bean. Baked beans can be eaten as part of an English breakfast, piled on top of a baked potato, devoured alongside fried eggs, or loaded on buttered bread and topped with a sprinkle of grated cheese. British to the core, Ringo even enjoyed his favorite food when he was India alongside specially prepared eggs without even a hint of Indian spice.

While Ringo Starr has been vegetarian for 25 years, back in the day, he loved nothing more than a good steak. As he told interviewer Gene Loving in 1964, all The Beatles "eat steak usually if we go out. Steak and chips. Eggs and chips. Beans." It's been a long time since Ringo enjoyed a steak. Today, he is a staunch vegetarian and advocate for a healthy lifestyle. As he recently told Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2, "I'm a vegetarian, I eat lots of berries, lots of fruit and lots of vegetables, and salad." In an interview with Rolling Stone, he elaborated on this, saying, "I am a vegetarian, I have broccoli with everything and blueberries every morning. I just do stuff that I feel is good for me."

The benefits of broccoli are well known. According to the National Institutes of Health, it's a powerful source of nutrients, is high in fiber, contains antioxidants, and has anti-inflammatory properties that contribute to heart health. It is also recognized for helping to lower cholesterol, maintain healthy blood pressure, and improve cardiovascular function. If you want to walk a step in Ringo's shoes and incorporate broccoli into your diet, we've come up with 20 broccoli recipes you're bound to love. It's a sure fire way to stay healthy and wholesome, just like Ringo.