Q: What Do Orcs Eat?
ANSWER: Although J.R.R. Tolkien included references to the things Orcs eat in a few passages he seems to have implied that Orcs ate a varied diet. It is also very probable that Orc-chieftains ate better than the Orcs were served in slave capacities. The constant bickering and jockeying for position among the Orcs that captured Merry and Pippin serves as the reader’s best introduction to Orc culture, even though the experience is very limiting. The Orcs in the raiding party came from several tribes and regions and therefore were not shown “at home”. They were also probably packing the Orc equivalent of trail rations as well.
Pippin ate some “stale grey bread” that an Orc tossed to him but refused to eat a strip of uncooked meat. In The Hobbit the Orcs who capture Thorin and Company take their ponies and horses, and the narrator tells the reader that Orcs (Goblins) love to eat horses and ponies. The Uruk-hai of Isengard tell the other Orcs that Saruman gives them “mans-flesh”; Grishnakh, an Orc from Mordor, challenges Ugluk of Isengard by telling the other Orcs the Uruk-hai probably just eat Orc-flesh. While one might question whether Orcs would eat Orcs, when Shagrat kills Gorbag in the Tower of Cirith Ungol he licks the blood from his knife blade.
Still, the fact that the Orcs make bread implies they have at least some basic culinary skill. It may very well be that Orcs eat cooked food when they can get it but they are not above eating raw flesh, blood, and other gruesome things when need presses them — or to show their domination over vanquished enemies. That is about the best answer one can contrive for this kind of question.
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