“Bond Was Not a Gourmet”

Abstract

In the course of his novels, lan Fleming describes in some detail seventy meals that James Bond consumes or considers eating. This article examines Bond's diet. Treating the food as artifacts and using the analytical methods of archaeology, it attempts to provide better understanding of its composition, and place it in social context. Three conclusions are drawn from the study. Bond's diet is nutritionally unbalanced when compared with recommended healthy-eating diets of the 1950s and modern times. However, there is order in Bond's food choices, in that particular foods are associated with specific meals. Finally, Bond's diet is near-identical to Fleming's, whose financially and socially-rich lifestyle—with at least two months each year spent in Jamaica—gave him access to a range of foods that, while normal to him, was far from the everyday experience for the book-buying public.

Keywords:

• James Bond
• Ian Fleming
• diet
• archaeology
• 1950s