The Queen Elizabeth Diet, According to a Former Royal Chef

Have you ever wondered what the Queen Elizabeth diet entails? At 92 years old, Queen Elizabeth is still chugging along, and her schedule only appears to be getting busier. We’d bet the secret to her longevity has a lot to do with what she eats. True to the way she conducts much of the rest of her life, Queen Elizabeth is very particular with her dietary habits. Former royal chef Darren McGrady shared with Recipes Plus some of the queen’s more unexpected rules for eating.

Life’s most delicious starches (aka potatoes and pasta) are off limits for the queen. Instead, she prefers to fill up on lighter, healthier options like fish and salad. According to McGrady, the queen’s typical meal contains either chicken or fish and two veggies. She also enjoys fruit, but only if it’s in season.

“You can send strawberries every day to the queen during summer at Balmoral [her summer house], and she’ll never say a word,” McGrady revealed. “Try including strawberries on the menu in January and she’ll scrub out the line and say don’t dare send me genetically modified strawberries. She absolutely does eat seasonal.”

In addition to strawberries, the queen enjoys bananas and pears — but she has a very peculiar way of eating them. While most of us would simply peel open a banana or take a bite out of a pear, the queen prefers to eat hers with utensils. “With a banana, she’ll cut off the bottoms and cut the banana length-wise, and then cut the banana into tiny slices to eat with a fork,” McGrady explained. As for pears, “[the queen] eats her pears like boiled eggs. She’ll cut off the top and scoop out the insides with a spoon. There is no eating like a monkey at Buckingham Palace.”

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The one area where our tastes and the queen’s align is when it comes to chocolate cake. According to McGrady, Queen Elizabeth is served a variety of cakes. Usually, the staff will get a bite of the desserts once the queen has been served — with the exception of her chocolate biscuit cake. The queen will not share her chocolate biscuit cake. “She’ll take a small slice every day until eventually there is only one tiny piece, but you have to send that up, she wants to finish the whole of that cake,” McGrady said. And don’t even think about stealing a piece for yourself: The queen will notice.