Feeding The Queen: Lessons on Healthy Eating from Queen Elizabeth II

The Queen and Prince Philip enjoying a meal with President and First Lady Ford at the White House sometime in 1976. Image from Ford Presidential Library and Museum

If there is someone to look up to when it comes to healthy diet, that would be The Queen. She owes her robust health in part to the good food that she enjoys. Never a fan of fast food, she prefers fresh fruits picked from her own gardens. She grows raspberry, gooseberry, and strawberry in her Balmoral estate in Scotland, while her countryside home, Sandringham, boasts of 70 acres of apples. She delights in savouring the strawberries from Balmoral, while the sweet white peaches from her Windsor Castle glasshouses find their way to the dinner table.

When the Queen is on holiday, either in Balmoral or Sandringham, she usually asks for a mid-morning snack of carrots from the kitchen. Not for her, though, but for the horses! There’s a specific way on how to prepare them: the carrots are peeled, trimmed, and topped, sliced lengthwise and in half to make sure that every carrot is of equal length. “Don’t ever cut them any shorter than that,” Darren McGrady, The Queen’s former head chef, warns. “Or she will blame us when the horse bites her fingers!” McGrady wrote in his book, Eating Royally.

Sunday at the country is a relaxing affair. After going to church, The Queen would enjoy her roast. She wants the well-done end slice of a joint; she does not like the rare part, Mark Flanagan, head chef to the royal household explains.

Mushrooms and marmite come together in The Queen’s plate. “When we cooked the Queen’s mushrooms we always added a smidgen of Marmite,” recalls Owen Hodgon, who worked at Buckingham Palace’s kitchens in the early 1990s. Mushrooms and Marmite are both rich in umami, giving flavorly sensation to The Queen’s palate.

For snifters, gin and Dubonnet are taken by The Queen with a slice of lemon and a lot of ice. She also drinks wine and champagne.

The Queen savors chocolates – in fact, it is part of her everyday diet. Her afternoon tea always comes with chocolate perfection pie or chocolate biscuit cake, made with McVitie’s Rich Tea biscuits. The chocolate ganache cake, first prepared for Queen Victoria, is another of The Queen’s favorite, served during her birthday and other birthdays in the Royal Family.

Another of The Queen’s favorite are jam pennies - bread spread with butter and jam and then sliced into circles as big as the old English penny . As a young girl, she and Princess Margaret would enjoy it.

With all these food, plus the seemingly endless banquets and occasions she has to attend (where delicious food is served, of course), how does The Queen manage to remain in shape and stay healthy? “She’s very disciplined,” Darren McGrady explained. She does not consume starch is the rule. “No potatoes, rice or pasta for dinner. Just usually something like grilled sole with vegetables and salad,” McGrady adds.  Food does not bother her. “All she cares about are horses and dogs," McGrady said in interview with CNN.