BOOK:|:KITCHEN

Perhaps not quite the "eating machine" also known as this, this, and Kobayashi, the hot dog contest gorger who at some point behind the scenes must look like this. 

From Scientific American: Eating Machine--"I call it an artificial living plant.  Like a botanical plant, the machine would have the ability to extract its own raw materials from the air, water and soil [see illustration]. It would obtain energy from the sunlight--probably by solar battery or steam engine.  It would use this energy to refine and purify the materials and to manufacture them into parts.  Then. like John Von Neumann's self-reproducing machine, it would assemble these parts to make a duplicate of itself.  It could then be harvested for a material it extracted or synthesized."--Edward F. Moore