The peculiar reason Ringo Starr will no longer consume anything bovine: “Have you seen a cow?”
Celebrities are strange people. Not only are they afforded a lifestyle completely removed from the reality of ordinary folk, but they often have such an untouchable, unquestionable reputation that somebody like Ringo Starr could go on American television to talk about the size of cow molecules, and nobody thinks to question it.
Whereas, in times gone by, Starr would have to field questions about his musical output, or his role in the biggest band that the world has ever witnessed, The Beatles, that is not always the case in the modern age. After multiple decades at the epicentre of the music industry, having spent the bulk of his younger years being screamed at by thousands upon thousands of adoring fans, the press has seemingly run out of music-based questions for Starr.
Instead, recent years have seen his eating habits become a rather strange focal point. In January 2025, the legendary drummer made for rather strange headlines, when he revealed to Jimmy Kimmel that he has never eaten a pizza, reportedly as a result of allergies. “It makes me ill immediately,” he said at the time, going on to add that he has never eaten a curry, either.
Long before that revelation, Starr added another layer to the intrigue surrounding his dietary habits when he explained his reasons for avoiding dairy during a 2021 appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Asked, of course, for his favourite sandwich, the former Beatle declared that he was partial to a cheese sandwich, before mysteriously adding, “It has to be goat cheese now.”
Colbert, being the veteran journalist that he is, quickly followed up to question that ambiguous statement from Starr. “I don’t eat anything from the cow,” the drummer explained. “The molecules are so big. Have you seen a cow? The molecules are so big, and that’s why, if you drink a glass of milk, you’re full.” He then concluded, “The goat is a good size for our bodies.”
There are many questions to be raised from this question-and-answer session. The question of why Starr was asked about his sandwich preferences in the first place is overshadowed, however, by his apparent view that larger animals are harder for humans to digest due to the size of their individual molecules.
Admittedly, there is a small crumb of truth in Starr’s anti-bovine stance: goat milk tends to have smaller fat molecules than cow’s milk (and, by extension, cheese). There is, therefore, some suggestion that goat’s milk is easier for humans to digest, whereas cow’s milk tends to make people feel more ‘full’.
Nevertheless, Ringo Starr’s rather novel theory that cow molecules are larger than goat molecules because cows are larger than goats is, bizarrely, an area of nutritional science which has yet to be fully explored. Presumably, by the same metric, elephant milk could sustain a human being for weeks on end, based solely on the size of the animal.
Where exactly Starr got the idea that molecules are relative to the size of the animals they belong to is unknown. As a longtime vegetarian, however, it seems unlikely that Starr was consuming many dairy products prior to this somewhat misguided realisation anyway.
If the Ringo Starr molecule saga teaches us anything, though, it is that his aforementioned aversion to pizza probably results from its tomatoes, given that a tomato-less pizza isn’t too far away from being a cheese sandwich.
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