What Eating Like Buddy The Elf Would Really Do To Your Body

The 2003 Christmas movie "Elf" features Buddy the Elf, a human raised at the North Pole who tries to navigate the realities of New York City as he seeks out and tries to bond with his biological father. In keeping with the "Elf culture" he was raised in, Buddy subscribes to a high-sugar diet that is based on what he identifies as the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup. Once in the human world, he expands his diet to spaghetti, although consumed with a copious amount of syrup (via Spoon University). 

Of course, a human in the real world could never reasonably sustain themselves on such a narrow selection for long, and actor Will Ferrell, who played Buddy, learned that the hard way during filming. He was evidently plagued by headaches, blood sugar crashes, and insomnia (via The Sun). Attempts to replicate his on-screen meals have been made both on sites like Nerdist and actual restaurants like Chicago's Miss Ricky's, where the edible nature of the resulting product is questionable at best (via The Takeout).

With that said, what if someone went further than to only consume the amount needed for a few scenes, and actually ate entire meals prepared in the spirit of the film's lore? That question was answered by Megan Zander on Romper back in 2015, and health-wise, the answer — unsurprisingly — seems to be nothing good. She decided that for one whole day she would craft meals that she felt were accurate to Buddy's sensibilities, if not necessarily screen-accurate. She started out with a breakfast of pancakes with whipped cream and sprinkles, followed by a banana with peanut butter and sprinkles for brunch. 

Lunchtime was less extreme — a peanut butter and jelly sandwich — but it was also by this time that she began to feel intense intestinal pain alongside a dry mouth and muscle twitches. Surprised but undeterred, for dinner she attempted to eat syrup-covered spaghetti as featured in the film, but defaulted to cupcakes when that proved too repulsive for her. The experience left Zander feeling sick and with a stomachache the following morning, though she admits that the process did improve her attitude toward the holiday season.