David Lynch and the Dietary Habits of Creative People

I was working on our email newsletter last week when I learned that one of my favorite directors, David Lynch, had died at the age of 78. Like many people, it took me a while to absorb the news. Then I started thinking about what Lynch ate for lunch.

One of the many interesting things about Lynch was the food he put into his body each day. The filmmaker, painter, musician, composer, director, and auteur was known for having a very regimented diet, often consisting of the same meal eaten at the same time of day, every day, for long periods of time.

Most famously, Lynch enjoyed a chocolate milkshake and coffee (lots and lots and lots of coffee) at the same restaurant every day for years, precisely at 2:30 p.m. He also reportedly ate the same lunch each day, a simple meal of tuna, feta cheese, tomatoes, and olive oil.

Lynch—with his messy, silvery, piled-high pompadour and impish smile—insisted that maintaining a consistent dietary routine helped to support his monolithic creativity. Sadly, for many years he also believed that cigarettes bolstered his creative output, which was a first-class ticket to emphysema.

As a long-time copywriter for a food co-op, I think a lot about what people eat, and the dietary habits of creative people in particular is an interest of mine. Here are just a few notable examples of famous creators and their dietary preferences:

Pitcher and Bowl of Fruit, Pablo Picasso, 1931

• Pablo Picasso credited his imagination to a steady diet of rice pudding, grapes, vegetables, and fish (among other things).
• Painter Georgia O’Keeffe believed healthy, unprocessed, seasonal foods led to improved creativity and productivity.
• Andy Warhol’s favorite sandwich, which he called “cake,” was chocolate between two slices of bread.
• Director Stanley Kubrick became so fascinated with Napoleon that he adopted his eating habits.
• Ludwig van Beethoven was a coffee addict who counted out exactly 60 beans for each cup.
• Apple co-founder Steve Jobs ate only one type of food, like carrots or apples, for weeks at a time.
• Oliver Sacks, neurologist and author, ate the same thing nearly every day—a large bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, herrings and black bread for lunch, and tabbouleh and sardines for dinner.

Please note: the facts here are surely blurred by the mythology surrounding these great thinkers, but you get the idea.

The point is that we talk a lot about how food fuels us physically—affecting our energy, sleep, workouts, and so on. But clearly there’s also a connection between what we eat and our ability to think, dream, and create.

Food does more than just fuel our bodies, it also fuels our ideas, which is why we should approach what we eat with intention.

Also, as we do this, it’s important to remember what my good friend and former Co-op dietitian Mary Choate says—”everything fits.” There’s room for chocolate shakes, rice pudding, coffee, and a lot of other things (besides cigarettes) in a healthy diet.

This is no surprise to any of us in the food co-op world. Nourish yourself well, and you’ll be amazed at what wonders you can produce. After all, what we eat shapes who we are and what we are capable of. Good food fuels the auteur in us all.

—Ken Davis, senior writer