Superman possesses half a dozen superpowers along with an incredibly durable stomach. While the Man of Steel can shoot lasers from his eyes and leap tall buildings in a single bound, he can also apparently ingest nearly anything he desires. While many Superman stories hint that his ability to gather energy from the sun makes eating unnecessary, the Man of Steel eats more than his fair share of food wherever he goes.
The Silver Age was a strange and wonderful time for DC Comics. Books featured creative, science-fiction stories that saw characters like Superman travel the universe. His favorite dish is beef bourguignon with ketchup, a meal that has become a running joke in Superman comics over the years, but the Last Son of Krypton put his Kryptonian genes to good use as he ate plenty of weird things that would be impossible for any human.
Updated on October 5, 2022 by Cole Kennedy: Superman has ingested a lot of strange items over the years. Most of the unorthodox meals the Man of Steel enjoyed came during DC's Silver Age when the comic book stories were generally goofier and lighthearted. Regardless of the stories' contexts, seeing Superman eat nuclear explosions and Kryptonite is a strange sight.
A Time Bomb
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman, Episode One "Pilot"
Superman and Lois Lane have had many fateful first encounters, but maybe none more awkward than the time the Man of Steel ate a bomb on Lois & Clark. While watching a shuttle launch on television, Clark Kent realizes that something is wrong. He flies to Metropolis to save the day, and he finds Lois Lane trying to deactivate a bomb.
Thankfully Superman has a super stomach. He shows up, pops the bomb into his mouth, allows the bomb to explode inside of him, and burps. Lois and the shuttle passengers appropriately watched in awe in confusion.
One Million Hamburgers
Action Comics #454 (1975) By Cary Bates, Curt Swan & Tex Blaisdell
Everyone knows that Superman gets his amazing superpowers from the radiation emitted by the yellow sun. When something happens to the sun, it’s only a matter of time before effects trickle to Superman. Superman becomes incredibly tired from using his abilities. It gets so bad that he has to take in thousands of calories at once just to regain his strength.
He visits a diner and has them cook up every hamburger in the place. It turns out that a radioactive rock at the center of the Earth is somehow draining the sun of its energy and causing Superman to lose more energy than he can retain. When the problem is fixed, he goes back to normal.
Kryptonian Chocolate
Action Comics #434 (1974) By Cary Bates, Curt Swan & Vince Colletta
If Superman has super teeth, then he never has to go to the dentist. That is, unless he eats chocolate artificially infused with Kryptonian science. Clark Kent receives a mysterious box of chocolates from his new fan club. However, as soon as he bites into one, he suffers a massive toothache that requires him to see a dentist immediately.
At the doctor’s office, the dentist manages to sedate Clark, despite the fact that he’s Superman. It turns out that it’s secretly Xa-Du, the man who would eventually be known as The Phantom King. The evil Kryptonian scientist shows Superman a hallucinogenic trip, and then just leaves him in the dentist chair for the real doctor to find him. Now that’s a master plan.
Dog Biscuits
Adventure Comics #310 (1963) By George Kashdan & George Papp
When Superman was active as Superboy in the Golden Age, a mysterious device makes Clark and Krypto swap minds, so while Superboy is acting like a dog, his super-pup is walking around on his hind legs and talking.
Superboy lives in a doghouse, goes for walks, and follows scents on all four legs, while his companion eats at the table and holds the leash. At one point, Superboy eats a bowl of dog biscuits, but readers learned that the two of them were faking their mind-swap the whole time. The ordeal feels a little awkward, and how was Krypto able to talk?
Human Flesh
Animal Man #23 (1990) By Grant Morrison, Chaz Truog, Doug Hazlewood & Tatjana Wood
Today, Overman is a Nazi version of Superman, but back in 1991, Grant Morrison created a different evil version of the Man of Steel. The Psycho-Pirate brought back several worlds that no longer existed after the destruction of the multiverse. It was a soft sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths.
One such world included Overman, a superhero created by the government who was used to spawn the rest of his world’s crime-fighting community. Psycho-Pirate’s vision shows the fate of the world, where this version of Superman became so evil and chaotic that he apparently ate the bodies of other superheroes.
Nuclear Explosion
Superboy #115 (1964) By Curt Swan & George Papp
During his career as Superboy, Clark Kent helped two scientists conduct an experiment. They knew two chemicals mixed together would produce a nuclear explosion, but with no safe place to test their theory, they asked Superboy and his super stomach to help.
Clark drank the two chemicals, which mixed inside his stomach, and produced a massive nuclear reaction. For the rest of the story, Superboy had the ability to spew nuclear fire from his mouth. He used it to do some good before saving the life of an alien and passing on the energy to him. As if Superman wasn’t strong enough, apparently he also needed fire breath.
A Fireplace Poker
Action Comics #27 (1940) By Jerry Siegel, Paul Cassidy & Dennis Neville
Even in the early days, Superman was biting off anything he could chew. In 1940, his powers were still nowhere near what they would one day become. People still thought they could take Superman on in a hand-to-hand fight. On this occasion, a criminal thought he could harm Superman with a red-hot metal poker.
Not only did the Man of Steel shrug off this attack, but he actually took a bite out of the weapon as well. He finds it a "tasty little snack" and actually mentions that he likes his food even hotter than that. It’s likely that the metal poker he just bit into was somewhere over 1,000 degrees.
A Wooden Apple
Superman #100 (1955) By William Woolfolk & Al Plastino
Superman thinks he’s so clever, being able to change in and out of his secret identity at super speed any time he wants. What happens when someone catches him in the act, though? Someone catches Superman changing into Clark Kent’s clothes, and it forces him to create a mustache for himself.
In his new disguise, he looks exactly like a teacher named Mr. Cranston and ends up roped into teaching a class at a nearby school. The school kids, trying to play a trick on a normal, non-superpowered teacher, give him an apple made out of wood. Given his abilities, Superman can tell the difference, but he decides to eat it anyway just to mess with the kids. It was quite the riot.
Everything Green
Superboy #91 (1961) By Robert Bernstein & George Papp
In a story typical of the Silver Age of comics, Superboy and Krypto are attacked by a space dragon that makes him compelled to eat anything colored green and his dog compelled to eat anything red. It sounds strange–and it is. The two cause trouble through Smallville until they are cured.
During his eating rampage, Clark ends up eating a green license plate, green fence, green carpet, green canvas and green paint. He also stopped a bank robbery and ate all the money they were stealing. The two are only cured when Superboy and Krypto appease their appetites by each devouring green and red moons.
A Pocket Knife
Superman #8 (1941) By Jerry Siegel, Paul Cassidy & Wayne Boring
In the Golden Age, Superman did plenty to make himself look less like a Big Blue Boy Scout and more like a villain capable of wanton destruction. Each of the stories in this issue show Superman messing up someone else’s day, and it’s incredible.
In one instance, he steals the gun from a crook, shoots it at him, and stops the bullet before it can hit him. He also meets with German soldiers and destroys their entire camp with his bare hands. Lastly, he fights a group of gangsters, and when one of them pulls a pocket knife on him, Superman just eats the whole thing.
An Entire Royal Banquet
Action Comics #266 (1960) By Jerry Siegel, Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye
Superman is the worst date ever. When Princess Jena of Adoria visits Earth, she takes a liking to Superman. They travel back to her world, and she has a love potion made to win him over. After he drinks it, he shows very little control over his powers. Superman smashes through walls, breaks things and causes disturbances wherever he goes.
Superman also eats an entire royal banquet all on his own. He devours everything just as everyone is ready to eat including bones. He also drinks all their water, which they apparently don’t have a lot of on Adoria. In the end, Jena rejects him as a menace. The worst part was that the potion didn’t do anything and Superman was just being a jerk on purpose.
Uranium
Green Lantern Corps Vol. 2 #18 (2008) By Peter Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Jamal Igle, Prentis Rollins, Gerry Ordway & Guy Major
He might not be Superman proper, but Superboy Prime is simply a younger version of Clark Kent from a different world. After he turns evil in Infinite Crisis, he joins Sinestro during the "Sinestro Corps War." Using the power of fear, he engages in an epic battle with Sodam Yat, current host for the Ion avatar of Willpower.
The two travel many miles over the course of their battle. At one point, they smash through a nuclear power plant. In an attempt to kill his opponent, Yat shoves a uranium rod down Superboy Prime’s mouth. It seems like an effective attack, only this boy has the powers of Superboy, and he can bite through anything. He merely sits there and chomps on the uranium, taunting the Green Lantern.
Deadly Microbes
World's Finest #54 (1951) By Al Plastino
Superman was so sick of being sold insurance in 1951 that he went out of his way to prove just how invulnerable he was. Superman took a shot from a cannon, sat in a furnace, froze himself, and even went on to drink a big cup of the world’s deadliest microbes.
Other than the fact that this last bit was utterly disgusting, Superman finally convinced the salesman that he did not need insurance. However, he is later convinced to sign a contract that will pay millions of dollars to the poor if he should die, but he is forced to follow all the intricate rules of his new policy and is unable to do anything dangerous.
A Salt Shaker
Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #1 (1958) By Otto Binder & Kurt Schaffenberger
Things get extremely weird when the Man of Steel goes a little too far in order to conceal his secret identity. Lois Lane becomes a cook at a diner in Metropolis in an outdated attempt to get Superman to fall in love with her. The joke is that Superman keeps secretly ruining everything she makes him because he’s too busy saving the day.
At some point, Clark Kent eats at the diner, but he soon makes a return as Superman to cover up the fact that his fingerprints were left on the salt shaker. He thinks Lois will compare them to Superman’s and find out the truth. Instead of simply wiping the fingerprints off, he decides to just eat the whole thing.
Kryptonite
Superman #233 (1971) By Dennis O'Neil, Curt Swan & Murphy Anderson
Traditionally, Kryptonite is one of Superman’s few weaknesses, but he once took a bite out of the glowing green rock. In the 1970s, DC Comics felt it was too ridiculous to have its most powerful superhero done in by such a small thing, so the company decided to do away with Kryptonite altogether by turning every sample of it on Earth into harmless iron.
A small-time crook, apparently not getting the memo, attempted to use Kryptonite against the Man of Steel. Superman snatched up the rock, took a nice, healthy bite, and found that it was a nice little snack. It just needs a bit of salt.