Elvis Hated This Food So Much He Banned It From Graceland

Elvis Presley, the King of Rock' n' Roll and winner of three Grammy Awards, was one of the most iconic singers of the 20th century. The wealthy rock legend starred in 31 films, served six years in the U.S. Army, and bought a presidential yacht for $55,000 (via History). Surprisingly, Presley's diet was nearly as famous as his music.

According to New York Daily News, Presley was raised in a poor household, occasionally ate squirrel meat, and turned to food for comfort after rising to fame. People reports that his popularity drove him to isolation, forced him to stop going out in public, and as he struggled to lose excess weight with extreme diets, the musician turned to drugs. "He said that the only thing in life he got any enjoyment out of was eating," Mary Jenkins Langston, Presley's chef for 14 years, told the BBC (via New York Daily News). "And he liked his food real rich."

Per The Los Angeles Times, the King's favorite foods included fried peanut butter-banana-bacon sandwiches, bacon-wrapped meatballs, fried chicken with potato chip coating, jelly doughnuts, chicken-fried steak, and vegetables saturated with butter and salt. And Presley indulged in these delicacies regularly. At the time of his untimely, controversial, and mysterious death at 42, he weighed 255 pounds.

According to Graceland archivist Angie Marchese, Presley loved Southern home cooking. "Elvis grew up on good ol' Southern food. He loved meatloaf, mashed potato, fried chicken...mac & cheese. Anything that he grew up on were some of his favourites," she said, per Express.

CheatSheet reports that the kitchen at Graceland, Elvis Presley's sprawling mansion in Memphis where he lived for two decades, was well-stocked at all times. The food items stuffed in its refrigerator 24x7 included sausages, eggs, hamburger buns, potatoes, peanut butter, milk, cream, and bacon. According to his ex-wife Priscilla Presley, he loved meatloaf and mashed potatoes so much that he ate the same meal every day for dinner for six months.

"His favorite feed consists of a pound of Dixie Cotton bacon, fried to a crisp; a quadruple order of mashed potatoes, brimming with 'thickenin' gravy'; a large portion of sauerkraut; a dish of crowder peas; and a stack of sliced tomatoes," discloses Albert Goldman in his book "Elvis" (via The Washington Post).

When you're the King, you can eat whatever you like. Or ban what you despise. And the legendary singer did precisely that — he banned fish from being served at Graceland. "He didn't like the smell of fish being cooked in the house," Marchese explained (via Express). "There was never any fish in the house." 

Aside from hating fish, Elvis Presley loathed the taste and smell of onion. In a special Thanksgiving video on YouTube, his cousin Billy Smith shared his memories of the iconic actor-singer's disdain for the vegetable. "One night, he called me out to Graceland. He wanted me to wash his eyes. That's when he had glaucoma. I had eaten a hamburger with onion on it. Well, I brushed my teeth and went out there" said Smith. When Presley sniffed the distinctive smell that usually lingers on a person's breath for hours, he made his displeasure known to Billy and asked him to "quit eating onion."

Apparently, it wasn't just fish or the smell of fish that Elvis disliked. He didn't like to go fishing, either. Billy said in the video that he could never get Presley to go fishing (via U.K. Express). " ... He just wouldn't do it," he said, adding that he could only remembered Presley going fishing twice. "Most of the time he just sat around and walked up and down. He wouldn't fish," he said. That didn't stop officials in Lee County, Mississippi, from naming a lake after the singer. The lake, which includes a campground, is in Tupelo, where Presley was born. 

Elvis also didn't like using silverware or glasses that other people had used before. In a 2015 interview on The Jonathon Ross Show, Presley's former wife, Pricilla, told Ross that her ex-husband didn't like using glasses or silverware that other people had used, which resulted in him taking his own silverware with him just about everywhere. She explained that Presley was this way even when he was younger, explaining that, in her opinion, he simply didn't like putting his mouth where other people had placed their mouths.