Extraterrestrial

If aliens had to survive on Earth, what exactly would they eat ?

By T.K. Randall
June 21, 2026

Image: Grey Aliens Drawing
Credit: MjolnirPants / CC BY-SA 4.0 (adapted) In Steven Spielberg's iconic 1980s movie ET: The Extraterrestrial, the titular alien is seen eating and drinking all manner of human foods and beverages from chocolates to tins of beer.

In reality, however, it is unlikely that an entity that lived and evolved on another world would be capable of consuming and digesting the same types of foods as we are.

For example, in The War of the Worlds, the alien invaders literally die because they drink the Earth's water which is contaminated with bacteria that proved deadly to them.

Professor Jose Miguel Soriano del Castillo of the University of Valencia has long pondered this issue.He argues that dining on the same foods that humans eat would be highly risky for a visitor from another world and that their best bet would be to instead seek out the individual nutrients and raw materials of food such as water, nitrogen, salts and basic organic molecules.

If they were advanced enough, they may even be able to use these materials to synthesize suitable foods that they are able to eat.

As for what an alien might typically eat on its own planet - it's difficult to speculate because it depends entirely on the biology of the alien and the nature of its planet's atmosphere.

If we were ever in a position in which we had to provide food to an alien visitor, we would likely need a whole team of scientists and nutritionists to determine what it could and could not eat.

Feeding it the wrong thing - no matter how well-intentioned - could prove fatal.

Source: Mail Online

Tags: Alien