30 Weird Eating Rules ‘Bachelor’ and ‘Bachelorette’ Contestants Have to Follow (2024)

From Bachelor Sean Lowe’s book, no one’s “allowed” to eat the fancy dinner food on dates. “Before we went on the date, the producers sent food to our hotel rooms,” Sean said. “We ate in our rooms and then went out for dinner, where we would be given beautiful food arranged nicely on the plate. This was just for show. No one looks good eating, and microphones pick up all kinds of chomping.”

Contestants might pick up a piece of their (mostly untouched) food and feed it to each other all sexy-like, but that’s usually the extent of their munching. In a very detailed article on this very subject, Jaclyn Swartz told Refinery 29, “The food on dates is usually good, but the catch is that you aren’t supposed to eat it! No one wants to watch people stuffing their face on a date. If you’re eating, you aren’t talking...Instead, we eat before the dates, as we are getting ready. The producers will bring room service to your room or a plate of food to where you’re getting ready in the house.”

The contestants do not have to cook on this spin-off and apparently get a vacation-style buffet for most of their meals. “There are catered buffets for every meal or you can also get things made to order behind the bar in the kitchen area,” said Jaclyn. “Grilled fish, quesadillas, and the best made-to-order pico de gallo I've ever had.”

The topic actually came up during a Bachelor in Paradise episode, in which a date between Tahzjuan Hawkins and John Paul Jones leads to a hushed conversation about why you’re not supposed to eat the date food. JPJ does anyway and subsequently almost vomits, so now he’s known as “the contestant who ate food on camera.”

And yes, some of that food is for show, but if you’re hungry—why not?? Case in point: Gotta love Tayshia Adams just fully nomming on the food during a scene from Katie Thurston’s Bachelorette season, right before the trio watched Katie’s contestants eat immense amounts of food (more on that later).

I mean...if you’re gonna stand around in a tight outfit, it might as well be worth it with a full catering situation? “But a lot of it isn’t the healthiest—think California Pizza Kitchen and fried chicken tenders,” Ashley Spivey told R29.

You’ve probs seen it before: A contestant brings a special meal on night one or gives the lead a birthday cake during the season to help themselves stand out as “the one who brought food” (it’s usually something they have to work out with producers). Sometimes, it’s cute. Sometimes—as you’ll see in the next slide—it absolutely is not.

Champagnegate, as it’s called, was a (mostly unnecessary) dramatic situation in which Kelsey Weier brought champagne from home (Iowa) to share with Bachelor Peter Weber, and Hannah Ann Sluss was told by producers accidentally grabbed it instead. When the mixup was fixed, Kelsey took a huge swig of the drink, and it exploded in her face.

Hot dogs have been used at least a couple times on the show as, you know, a very blatant innuendo for future potential sexytimes. And, of course, you’ve gotta feed them to each other—I don’t make the rules. There are times it goes better than others.

So, because contestants are not allowed out of the hotel during filming periods (because they’re cut off from the rest of the world), they can only eat hotel food. Some of the women say they loved it, but Ashley told R29 that “the most unhealthy part of the whole trip for me was when we were sequestered before the first rose ceremony...You are pretty much locked in and can only order room service for every meal. The hotel we were at didn’t have the healthiest options and I literally ate a burger and fries for days.”

And apparently, contestants have ways to get around the two-drink limit, as Robby Hayes explained, “If it was two drinks an hour, we’d grab one at 3:50, one at 3:55, then [it was a] new hour at 4:00. We’d grab one at 4:00, and one at 4:05, then you have four drinks within 15 minutes.”

Peter Weber’s season was a mess anyway, but in one particular encounter, one contestant told him about another contestant, saying, “I’ve seen multiple times that she’s drinking excessively.” Drama and denials ensued.

Technically, the rule is you can’t decline any date or extreme activity, but some of them are v specifically food-related. Who knows how contestants deal if they have food allergies and the challenge involves something they’re allergic to (this deleted scene, from Michelle Young’s season, was butter-sculpture-making).

And on Katie’s season, the men were tasked with a food-eating challenge—a whole pile of Twinkies and a ton of pasta alfredo to name a few—and some of the men hadn’t had carbs in years. So the food challenges can be intense, in other words.

Yup. Leslie Hughes told the Daily Beast, “We have to do our own cooking, our own laundry…We do everything you would do when you’re at home, except be able to go outside of your home.” Ashley added to R29 that most women ate simply (breakfast: eggs, yogurt, protein bars, lunch: sandwiches or salads). “Dinner would be prepared by whoever felt like cooking for everyone,” she added. “On my season, Britt was a classically trained chef, so she would make things like bacon jam or roasted tomato soup. I usually made dessert, like banana pudding.”

Every day, a “handler” goes to the store for them. “We were allowed to write whatever we wanted on the grocery lists,” Jaclyn told R29. “But Courtney was raw [and] vegan at the time and 99.9 percent of the girls were gluten-free, so it was a lot of boring crap that I don’t eat. So, my additions to the grocery list were Nutella and ‘gluten products.’”

The house already has snacks and basic items: veggies, fruit, cold cuts, bread, eggs, cereal, and frozen food, among other things. “They had huge glass jars filled with cheese balls, pretzels, and things along those lines,” said Jaclyn.

Yes, you can bring snacks from home (presumably so long as it all fits into the three suitcases you’re allowed to bring to the show). “Because I’m gluten-free, I always packed a few of my own snacks,” Tenley Molzahn told R29.

Occasionally, production staff will order dinner for the contestants so they don’t have to cook that particular night. “They usually do one In-N-Out night and one sushi night,” said Tenley.