true final diet?
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jaredpresley — 18 years ago(October 31, 2007 12:18 PM)
Right up before he died he actually stopped eating. His diet was weird within the last 10 years of his life. Let me clarify. While in vegas, he would nibble on chicken and chicken noddle soup. He went through a tv dinner phase for a little less than a year. he would drink milk, water too, but only a certain bottled type.
He did like sweets as in cakes and ice cream. (Theres a interesting story on the ice cream that i can tell you all if you wish) the heresy bar thing is overplayed. he did go through that phase, but it wasn't for the whole last 10 years. The last things he ate was chicken, and he would basically nibble on it -
jaredpresley — 18 years ago(December 06, 2007 07:43 PM)
From wikipedia.
Hughes' considerable business holdings were overseen by a small panel unofficially dubbed "The Mormon Mafia" because of the many Latter-day Saints on the committee. In addition to supervising day-to-day business operations and Hughes' health, they also went to great pains to satisfy Hughes' every whim. Hughes once became fond of Baskin-Robbins' Banana Nut ice cream so his aides sought to secure a bulk shipment for himonly to discover that Baskin-Robbins had discontinued the flavor. They put in a request for the smallest amount the company could provi5b4de for a special order, 350 gallons (1,300 L), and had it shipped from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. A few days after the order arrived, Hughes announced he was tired of Banana Nut and wanted only French Vanilla ice cream. The Desert Inn ended up distributing free Banana Nut ice cream to casino customers for a year, until the 350 gallons were gone. -
MarieGabrielle — 16 years ago(September 11, 2009 03:29 PM)
I read it was Baskin Robbins' banana ripple, and his staff ordered tons of it, and when it arrived he said he no longer liked it..
Was he anorexic or just eccentric? To carry his food obsession for 10 years that's like part of a sickness,what other things did he do? Are there any films that accurately tell his story? "The Aviator" seemed to center too much on his relationship with Katharine Hepburn, it didn't go in depth about his personality. -
Kupava — 17 years ago(April 24, 2008 12:01 AM)
I once did a research paper on him while in high school. The sources I had found in the library stated that he had OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and therefore would only eat food that he thought was processed with little or no probability of being contaminated with germs. He was sure that germs essentially came from people, and he'd eat Hershey bars because they were made by machines at a factory, not by hand. He'd lock himself up in a room and watch Hollywood movies and only eat those bars and milk, and he'd also use up to 12 tissues at a time simply to hold on to the door knob, 'cause he was so obsessed with germs.
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Ipsissimus — 17 years ago(November 25, 2008 02:27 AM)
Before 1956 he would eat (exclusively for long periods of time) a steak, baked potato, the aforementioned twelve peas (he wouldn't eat the peas if they were too large), and either chocolate chip cookies or vanilla ice cream for dessert. In 1956 he locked himself in a screening room of Goldwyn studios where he stayed for four months, with his aides tending to him. While there he consumed only Hershey bars, milk, and Poland Water (which he drank his entire life). By 1966 he had moved into the top floor of the Desert Inn hotel in Las Vegas (which he bought when the owners wanted him to move out to make room for New Year's Eve high rollers) where he would go on "kicks" of certain foods, including Swanson's turkey dinners, which he discontinued when he couldn't get Swanson's to eliminate the dark turkey meat from the dinner; fried chicken (he would nibble on a single piece of chicken for as long as an entire day); and the trusty steak dinners. He also got on a5b4 peculiar ice cream kick: he liked Baskin-Robbins' Banana Nut ice cream so much it was all he would eat for dessert for many weeks. When Baskin-Robbins discontinued that variety Hughes's aides ordered a special order of two hundred gallons (the smallest special order the company would fill) so that Hughes wouldn't have to do without. As soon as the huge order arrived at the Desert Inn Hughes suddenly changed his mind, "Well, that Banana Nut sure is good, but it's time for a change; I want french vanilla from now on." The Desert Inn ended up giving away the Banana Nut just to get rid of it. From around 1971 ( when he moved out of Las Vegas and started his bouncing around from place to place) on, Hughes ate less and less, partly because his digestion was screwed up from the MASSIVE amounts of codeine he took. Codeine is a notorious constipator, and Hughes would sometimes go for weeks without a bowel movement, and then only with the help of enemas and handfuls of stool softeners. In addition to the codeine, Hughes took incredibly large amounts of Valium, a tranquilizer. He was known to take up to seven ten-milligram Valiums at a time, two or three times a day, a literally mind-boggling huge amount. As a result, between the codeine and the Valium Hughes was a zombie most of the time, laying in his bed (which he only left to go to the bathroom, and sometimes carried even there. I'm not making this up!!) watching movies, in many cas5b4es the same film over and over again. He eventually ate next to nothing, and stopped drinking liquids, even the Poland Water. He died of renal failure brought on by dehydradtion and malnutrition in 1976 at the age of seventy, en route by air to Houston, Texas to get to a kidney dialysis machine. Also, there are some who claim he died from a drug overdose.
" Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." -
konthar — 11 years ago(December 11, 2014 04:40 AM)
Sorry for the Necropost, just watched 'The Aviator'-
I'm beginning to suspect from my own personal experiences that perhaps Howard's physical & mental state, plus diet may have had a great deal to do with the large amounts of opiates he was on for his pain. I have Spondylolisthesis (a Vertebrae that has broken lose from the Spinal Column) and a collapsed disc. I take a very large daily dose of opiates myself & the constipation issues are a complete nightmare. There are times I think it's worse than the maddening pain. So I could completely understand Hughes pursuing any diet that would lessen that situation.
Of course, adding in his mental disabilities and the lack of serious medical nutritionist help for those decades, as well as no one having enough influence over him to tell him what was really good for him, well that's a nasty combination of issues to deal with. I'm actually surprised he lived as long as he did. People may consider him weak because of his instability, but I think he had an Iron Will to keep himself together as long as he did.