Teddy Roosevelt drank 12 to 16 cups of coffee every day. Ronald Reagan’s White House kept 720 bags of jelly beans a month on hand for the president, staff, and visitors.
William Taft, though, tops most presidents when it comes to sheer quantity of food, according to Cooking with Congress creator Bennett Rea.
Rea came to Cheyenne recently for a presidential-history dinner tied to a Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum exhibit on presidents who once visited Wyoming’s capital city.
He recreates the food of famous political figures for his Cooking with Congress channel, eating just like them for a 24-hour period. His subjects have ranged from South Carolina Sen. Ernest Hollings’ celery bread and Jimmy Carter’s cheese ring recipe, to former Wyoming Gov. Ed Herschler’s Brown Elk in Beer, which was deemed “pretty good.”
Not only does Rea eat these foods — be they possum or cottage cheese with ketchup — he also eats them in similar quantities.
That meant Rea’s day of eating like Taft was an 8,200-calorie day — which he had to train for, just like he would a hot dog-eating contest.
He didn’t eat for 25 hours afterward.
“He would start his day with a 12-ounce steak, waffles and maple syrup, a pat of butter, two oranges, 4 to 5 cups of coffee with cream and sugar,” Rea told a group of diners gathered to eat like American presidents. “Not a big snacker throughout the day.
"He would take a lunch, and it would be four lamb chops, a bowl of turtle soup, a bowl of bouillon, which is much like broth, smelt with tartar sauce, some new potatoes, chocolate bonbons, raspberry jelly with whipped cream, and some salted almonds.”
The latter was the snack of choice, if Taft ate any snacks, which he usually didn’t.
For dinner, Taft’s menu included a heart-of-palm salad, a peach salad, a rich lobster stew, a mussel soup called Billi Bi, possum, sweet potatoes, a salmon fillet, and another 12-ounce steak. This was followed up with dessert, which included a slice of date pie, a fruit plate, frozen pudding, and some coffee.
This kind of eating did cause Taft to gain weight, and doctors tried to help him lose it.
His eating habits also spawned a rumor that the president had become stuck in a bathtub at the White House, which Rea said is just a myth.
“He did order a very large tub for the White House,” he said. “Enough to fit, I think they said four to six people. So while he probably never got stuck, maybe he was just being precautionary.”
The creator of the popular Cooking With Congress series that delves into American history through food hosted a recent Cheyenne presidential dinner party. Diners ate bison steak like Teddy Roosevelt, drank a Kennedy and nibbled jelly beans like Reagan. (Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum) 
Rea Bennett was in Cheyenne recently for a Cooking with Congress dinner, which celebrated presidential visits to Cheyenne. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Rea Bennett was in Cheyenne recently for a Cooking with Congress dinner, which celebrated presidential visits to Cheyenne. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Rea Bennett was in Cheyenne recently for a Cooking with Congress dinner, which celebrated presidential visits to Cheyenne. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Just An Everyday Meal
The menu for Taft’s day was not the result of some sort of state function with ambassadors from foreign countries we want to impress, Rea said.
“We taxpayers pay for fancy dinners when ambassadors and dignitaries come to town,” he said. “But on the everyday, (presidents) are eating what they want to buy … So, these were his decisions.
“It’s not a big fancy dinner, either, it’s just what he liked to eat every day,” Rea added. “Even if it looks like an inaugural dinner for some of the Gilded Age presidents.”
Later photographs suggest at least some of Taft’s eating binges were stress-related, he said.
“He did not want to be president,” he said. “He wanted to be, in his words, his dream was being the Supreme Court chief justice.
“Which he eventually would become after being the president," Rea added, gesturing to a slide of Taft in his Supreme Court robes, which shows a relatively trim figure. “And just like that, the weight dropped off.”
Humanizing History
Cheyenne diners were spared possum and cottage cheese with ketchup for their meal, which covered an 87-year span, starting with Roosevelt’s 1903 visit to Cheyenne and ending with George H.W. Bush’s 1990 stop.
Rea started the meal with a John F. Kennedy daiquiri and Bush’s tomato bisque with pork rinds, followed by Lyndon B. Johnson’s spinach soufflé and Roosevelt’s bison sirloin tip roast with some garlicky wild dandelion greens.
The meal ended with Taft’s meringue-topped date pie, with a bonus Rocky Ford cantaloupe and a cupful of jelly beans for Reagan.
The dinner was the idea of the Old West Museum’s Curtis Olson. He was looking for programming to complement the museum’s exhibit on presidential visits to Cheyenne, which are a lens on the city’s place in America’s evolving story for the nation’s 250th birthday.
“I knew JFK’s visit was huge,” Olson told Cowboy State Daily. “And we thought it was a dinner at the time. It turned out it was a breakfast, but we still wanted to do a dinner to kind of recreate his visit here.”
Olson had heard of Rea’s channel, Cooking with Congress, and on a whim decided to email him and ask whether the social media celebrity would want to curate a presidential dinner at the museum. The exchange led to a menu that highlighted all the presidents in the CFD museum’s exhibit, as well as Rea himself, talking about the food habits of each president.
Peering into the refrigerator of big personalities is Rea’s favorite subject, he told Cowboy State Daily.
“These are some of the most interesting, fascinating diets of the White House,” he said. “I think it kind of ties back to this idea that you can discover a lot about a person through what they eat.”
There’s also something humanizing about knowing what such legendary figures ate.
“It brings them down to human size,” Rea said.
Bison steaks with dandelion greens, favorites of Teddy Roosevelt, paired with spinach cheese soufflé loved by Lyndon B. Johnson. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Kennedy’s favorite daiquiri started the Eat Like a President meal curated by Cooking with Congress’ Bennett Rea. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A dish of jelly beans, Ronald Reagan style, sat on every table at a Cooking with Congress dinner that recently celebrated presidential visits to Cheyenne. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Tomato soup with pork rinds and hot sauce were a favorite of George H. W. Bush. His liking for pork rinds boosted their sales double digits. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A slice of date pie like William Taft liked with a bonus, Rocky Ford canteloupe slices that were a favorite of Ronald Reagan’s — also paired with cottage cheese. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Buttons And The Snacks
One food trivia point that many might not know is that President Donald Trump has a Diet Coke button in the White House, Rea said.
“Press a button, and someone brings you a Diet Coke,” he said. “Around 12 a day, give or take. Ten to 12 Diet Cokes per day is normal.”
That’s something Rea has done for Cooking with Congress, he added, which he described as “intense.”
“That Diet Coke button was not always a Diet Coke button,” Rea said. “In fact, it was invented by LBJ. He had a Fresca button. So essentially, he hit the button, and someone brought a Fresca. Grapefruit-flavored Fresca or the original.”
Johnson was a stress-eater, a bit like Taft, Rea said, and he was constantly sipping on Fresca — at least, while his wife, Lady Bird, was around. That is when he was minding his diet and consuming low-calorie pie, steamed fish, plain string beans, and low-calorie Fresca.
When his wife was away, though, Johnson would play.
“The moment Lady Bird Johnson left the White House on any trip for any reason, he would order completely different foods to his plate,” Rea said. “Ribs right now please! Like get ribs in front of me. We’re eating like it’s vacation!”
Jelly Belly White House
This kind of shift is a common presidential theme, Rea added.
“According to Reagan’s chef at the time, his go-to order the moment Nancy was gone, he would say, ‘I’m going to need a steak cooked well-done, make it big,’” Rea said. “And a side of mac and cheese and a big old chocolate mousse.”
Chocolate was forbidden for Reagan.
“Nancy told all the executive staff, the chefs, ‘No chocolate in the White House. No chocolate for Ronald …’ So he went crazy for mousse whenever she was gone.”
The jelly beans, meanwhile, were Reagan’s way of coping while he quit smoking. Initially, the president tried corn nuts, Rea added, but they were killing his teeth.
“Jelly beans became his cigarette replacement,” Rea said. “He is so enamored with jelly beans that he placed orders for the Governor’s Mansion in California year over year. Big orders.”
When he was campaigning for the presidency, a photo captured a Jelly Belly logo on his desk, and it became something of a media frenzy.
“People go crazy looking for it,” Rea said. “The company gets so many orders for jelly beans, they go 77 weeks behind in production. They cannot keep up with demand.”
Rea said the company had to buy a brand-new factory to keep up with orders. They also invented a new color specifically for Reagan.
“Reagan asked them for red, white and blue jelly beans for the White House,” Rea said. “And the company said, ‘That’s wonderful. Red and white are flavors that we have. We don’t have a blue.’”
The blue jelly bean they invented is blueberry, and that’s still around.
“So, if you see a blue jelly bean on your plate later, you can thank Ronald Reagan for that,” Rea said.
Reagan’s love affair with jelly beans continued through seven of his eight years as president. Then he switched it up to M&Ms.
Lyndon B. Johnson accepts a cowboy hat during one of his 1960s visits to Cheyenne, during Cheyenne Frontier Days. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 visit included a drive through Cheyenne's downtwon in a brand-new Studebaker. The photo is part of an exhibit exploring presidential visits to Cheyenne to celebrate America's 250th. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Items from William Taft and other presidents who have visited Cheyenne from 1903 to 1990 on display at Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Lyndon B. Johnson artifacts displayed at Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Which Presidential Diet Is Best?
Rea was asked which president’s diet he would choose for himself.
“If I ate like Barack Obama every day, I’d probably live a really long time, but I’d be a little sad,” he said. “It’s a little too healthy for me. Same with Reagan’s diet. I want to eat something that’s not good for me sometimes.”
Herbert Hoover came to mind, Rea said, because he had good taste.
“That was kind of the issue at the time. He was eating incredibly well while the nation was not,” Rea said. “But he had good taste. Maybe a little indulgent. But he liked a good cocktail and so do I.”
Of the six presidents on the menu, the winner would probably be Roosevelt, even though he drank prodigious amounts of coffee.
“I like the worldly nature of it,” Rea said. “There’s a good balance of foods in there.”
Roosevelt enjoyed Senegalese chicken soup and fermented pu-erh tea or lapsang souchong, a smoked Chinese black tea.
“He also loved his wild game,” Rea said. “That’s why you have bison steak on the menu. But he also liked antelope, quail, and venison, which would be great, and wild birds and so on.”
But quantities come into play with all of Roosevelt’s meals, Rea added.
“Twelve cups of coffee is maniacal,” Rea said. “And that’s what he was taking down in a day.”
Roosevelt typically ate a dozen hard-boiled eggs and could go on to eat an entire roasted chicken for lunch. Rea also mentioned stories about Roosevelt eating 24 peaches as a snack on a three-hour train ride when he was just 12.
“He’s always had this voracious appetite for foods from across the world,” Rea said. “Especially places he’d visited. Africa, the East … he was a man of large appetites.”
Eat Like A President Yourself
Those looking to eat like a president could consider diet foods like cottage cheese with Nixon’s ketchup or Reagan’s cantaloupe — though the minute one’s significant other walks out the door, that could reasonably become a 24-ounce porterhouse with béarnaise sauce.
Most of the presidents seem to need simplicity, Rea added.
“These people are making decisions every single day that impact millions of lives,” Rea said. “They don’t want to think about whether they should get Italian dressing or balsamic on their salad. They want everything selected for them.”
That’s even true once they leave office, Rea added. Joe Biden, for example, has a rider in every event contract that says he must have angel hair pasta pomodoro available to him.
“They need simple comforts, maybe even childhood comforts,” he said. "There’s a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a lot of cereal. Simple stuff that they enjoyed when they were 8.”
So the best presidential meal to have tonight, Rea suggested, might just be whatever you liked as a child.
Behind all the formal dinners, security details, and immense responsibilities of the White House, it’s nice to know that presidents often reach for the same uncomplicated comforts as anyone else — cereal, peanut butter and jelly, a favorite candy or familiar plate of pasta.
Rea ended with one warning for those inspired to eat like a president: Don’t overdo it.
“Don’t commit bushusuru,” he said with a chuckle, invoking a Japanese term associated with a highly publicized 1992 illness during a dinner where Bush vomited in the lap of Japan's prime minister. “Enjoy the evening, enjoy the rest of dinner, enjoy the rest of your drinks. But do not do the bushusuru.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
