The Food Ringo Starr Proved He Couldn’t Live Without When The Beatles Traveled
When The Beatles traveled to India in 1968, Ringo Starr made sure to pack a lot of food. Starr has a multitude of food allergies that limit his diet. He worried about having his food choices out of his control while training with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. As a result, he packed an entire suitcase full of beans.
Ringo Starr brought a full suitcase full of this food when The Beatles went to India
The Beatles attended a seminar on transcendental meditation in 1967. They decided to further their education in 1968 with a trip to visit the Maharishi in India. George Harrison had the greatest interest in meditation, but his bandmates all joined him. Harrison took note of Starr’s packing choices.
“John came, and Paul came after him, and then Richard [Ringo] followed with fifteen Sherpas carrying Heinz baked beans,” Harrison said in The Beatles Anthology. “There was also the world’s press; I pretended to be asleep all the way to Delhi so I didn’t have to talk to them.”
Starr explained that his allergies — which prevented him from eating foods like onion and garlic — would keep him from eating anything. As a result, he took something he knew he could eat.
“The food was impossible for me because I’m allergic to so many different things,” he said. “I took two suitcases with me, one of clothes and the other full of Heinz beans (there’s a plug for you).”
Luckily, he didn’t have to stick to an all-bean diet while there.
“Then one morning the guys who were dealing with the food said, ‘Would you like some eggs?’ And I said, ‘Oh yeah, sure,’ and the next morning they said it again,” Starr recalled. “I thought, ‘Oh yeah, great — things are looking up.’”
Ringo Starr’s favorite food now is a bit different
In the decades since Starr went to India with The Beatles, he has completely changed his lifestyle. He stopped using drugs and alcohol and began to focus on incorporating exercise into his life. He also switched to a vegetarian diet that has him eating broccoli often.
“I’m a vegetarian,” he told Rolling Stone in 2020, adding, “I have broccoli with everything and blueberries every morning. I just do stuff that I feel is good for me.”
His brother-in-law Joe Walsh joked that Starr eats so many vegetables that he smells like them.
“Every time I see Ringo, he smells of kale,” Walsh said.
He left India early
Starr left India before his bandmates. According to Paul McCartney, this had to do with his dislike of the food.
“Ringo came home early; he could stand the food and his wife couldn’t stand the flies,” he said. “It was understandable; he was a very British lad. There were curries and spicy food — and he has a stomach that gets upset easily (probably due to the peritonitis when he was a kid). Maureen didn’t like the flies — if there was one fly in the room, she would know exactly where it was at any given time.”
Starr claimed his early departure had more to do with the fact that they’d left the kids at home.
“We came home because we missed the children,” he said. “I wouldn’t want anyone to think we didn’t like it there. I said it was like Butlins holiday camp, we had learnt by then that you could say anything and they’d print it. It was a good experience — it just didn’t last as long for me as it did for them.”
Still, he said he kept up the practice of meditating when he returned home.
