Who created National Eat What You Want Day?

Thomas and Ruth Roy of Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, who submitted it to the almanac Chase's Calendar of Events. Tom Roy was a radio morning host, and Ruth Roy has been a radio host and runs the couple's herb business.

Is it National Eat What You Want Day or just Eat What You Want Day?

The creators call it Eat What You Want Day, and that is the form Chase's printed. Both names point to the same May 11 observance.

May 11 is the date on the Roys' own listing and the date Chase's printed. No source found states why they picked it.

National Eat What You Want Day

Next celebratedTuesday, May 11, 2027

On National Eat What You Want Day the deciding vote goes to your appetite. Follow it to a restaurant or to your own kitchen, and give the meal a proper seat at the table instead of a rushed corner of the day.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEMay 11

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYFood

SUBCATEGORYDining

ORIGIN

Individual Initiative

FOUNDING ENTITY

Thomas and Ruth Roy (Wellcat Holidays & Herbs)

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A radio host filled in the form at the back.

Thomas and Ruth Roy created the day and submitted it to Chase's Calendar of Events, the annual almanac Tom Roy used as prep for his radio morning show. No year of creation is documented, and Chase's printed it as Eat What You Want Day, with no National in front.

See the Roys' own holiday listvia Wellcat Holidays & Herbs

INTRO

The whole holiday fits in two sentences

National Eat What You Want Day sounds like something a brand made up. It has an author, a copyright notice and a place in a reference book.

HathiTrust's scans of Chase's Calendar of Events carry the entry from the edition for 1992. The 1990 and 1991 editions are in the same archive and do not have it.

Chase's did not print the National. The entry is Eat What You Want Day, and the Roys still call it that.

ORIGINS

Eat What You Want Day history

INTRODUCTION

Chase's Calendar of Events has been listing the year's observances since brothers William and Harrison Chase published the first edition on 4 December 1957. In the back of the book, it also carried a form.

The form let a reader propose an observance of their own. In 1986 it found a radio host in Pennsylvania.

CHAPTER 01

Show prep in Lancaster

Tom Roy was the morning man at WIOV, and he used the almanac to find something to talk about on air. He got off at nine, went to his office and worked up the next day's show.

One day he reached the back of the book. "I thought oh no, oh God help me," he told Marketplace, "because I knew I was going to do it." His first entry was Northern Hemisphere Hoodie-Hoo Day.

CHAPTER 02

A newscaster says hoodie-hoo

Chase's printed it, and the earliest edition holding it in HathiTrust's scans is the one for 1988. When February 20 came around, the broadcaster Paul Harvey closed his noon newscast with it.

"OK everybody, 1-2-3 Hoodie-Hoo! Paul Harvey, good day," Harvey signed off. Roy immediately invented eight more holidays. Chase's printed all of them.

CHAPTER 03

The entry for May 11

Ruth Roy's own path ran from touring actress to college administrator to radio host. She joined the writing, and the couple began printing the days with a notice saying they were, indeed, copyrighted.

Their own website has carried the same two sentences for the day since 1999. They read: "Here's one day you may actually enjoy yourself. Ignore all those on-again-off-again warnings."

That is the whole brief, and the entry has not grown since. By 2023 Tom Roy was telling LebTown he could invent another hundred days easily and did not want to.

TIMELINE

Timeline

A radio host finds the form

Tom Roy, the morning man at WIOV, found the submission form at the back of the almanac he used for show prep.

The Roys reach print

Northern Hemisphere Hoodie-Hoo Day appears in the Chase's edition for 1988, the earliest that HathiTrust's scans carry.

May 11 enters the almanac

The Chase's edition for 1992 is the earliest in HathiTrust's scans that carries Eat What You Want Day.

The list goes online

The Roys' own website lists the day with the two sentences it still carries today.

The day gets its own page

A dedicated page on the couple's site sets out their copyright claim and an exclusive contract with Blue Mountain Arts and Excite.com for electronic greeting cards.

The Roys stop submitting

Tom Roy tells LebTown it has been more than a decade since the couple last sent a holiday to the almanac.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Eat What You Want Day

EVIDENCE

Forty of fifty cookbook ingredients had a cancer-risk study.

A 2013 review in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition took 50 common ingredients from random cookbook recipes and searched the literature on each one. Forty of them had published studies on their cancer risk, and the 36 meta-analyses in the set produced pooled risks that were on average null.

MONEY

A bakery rented the day for a month

Entenmann's Bakery paid the Roys to use Eat What You Want Day, and Purina paid for their Answer Your Cat's Question Day. By the couple's own account the bakery took exclusive rights for a month and handed out its newest snacks at Grand Central Station.

MARKET

Getting a date now costs money

One company founder told Marketplace she paid $5,000 to register a September date with a holiday registrar. Chase's editor-in-chief Holly McGuire calls the field "a little bit of a wild west out there with what people call holidays."

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Eat What You Want Day

Greeting-card companies paid by the holiday

Blue Mountain Arts offered the Roys $50 per holiday for the right to use them, and Tom Roy says the check that arrived was for $4,000. American Greetings started sending royalties only after a lawyer got involved pro bono.

The man who invented it acts in films

Tom Roy is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA, and played the wild-eyed street evangelist in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys.

The holidays share a website with an herb shop

Wellcat sells Ruth Roy's perfumes, potpourri, lotions and catnip-stuffed rats alongside the list of days, and Tom Roy says he is at the Cleona post office almost every day mailing them out.

There was supposed to be a book

The 2003 page for the day said the couple were co-authoring one about the holidays, called Wellness . . . With a Grain of Salt, and asked readers to be patient.

Yahoo once called the site strange

The Roys' 1999 holiday page announced that Yahoo! Internet Life had named it Strange Site of the Day. Their own aside sat right beside it: I think they meant it as a compliment.