Life

This Is What Princess Diana Ate Every Day

A former royal chef served up her food preferences.

by Lara Rutherford-Morrison

In a recent interview with the Daily Mail, a former royal chef revealed what Princess Diana ate every day, and it turns out the Princess of Wales favored eating a low-carbs, low-fat diet — although she appears to have been willing to mix it up once in a while.

Chef Darren McGrady served the royal family for over 15 years. He spent 11 years making food for the queen at Buckingham Palace, and then moved on to cooking for Princess Diana following her 1993 split from Prince Charles, after which she lived in an apartment in Kensington Palace. “She’d tell me: ‘You take care of the fats, I’ll take care of the carbs at the gym,’” he told the MailOnline. She loved stuffed peppers and adored bread and butter pudding — so much so that when McGrady was making it, she would come into the kitchen and eat the raisins off the top, McGrady remembers. Princess Diana ate red meat on special occasions; for instance, McGrady remembered that she once asked for roast lamb when she was hosting Clint Eastwood for dinner.

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Diana’s sons, William and Harry, favored typical children’s fare, including pizza, fish sticks, and “potato skins stuffed with mozzarella,” he said. (Um, yum.) McGrady remembered that they also loved shepherd’s pie and banana flan.

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McGrady also remembered how he and the princess would sometimes fool the boys into thinking that they were eating the same food as their mother. “We used to trick the boys,” he remarked. “We used to feed them roast potatoes and roast chicken but take the skin off. … For [Diana’s] potatoes, I’d parboil them and toss in egg whites and paprika.”

McGrady also has fond memories of working for Queen Elizabeth II, who turned 90 on April 21, before his tenure with the princess. “For the most part we absolutely adored the queen, so we wanted to do whatever we could to make her day a bit easier,” he said. “They were very happy days, I’ve got some very happy memories.”