Princes William and Harry’s Childhood Eating Habits Will Make You Feel Like a Good Parent

You don't need decadent or organic foods to eat like a royal.

princes-william-and-harrys-eating-habits-as-kids-will-make-you-feel-like-a-good-parent-3064598a-EDITORIAL-Mike-Forster-ANL-REX-ShutterstockMike Forster/ANL/REX/ShutterstockYou might imagine Princes William and Harry ate like, well, kings when they were little. Royals must have refined taste, right?

Not necessarily. When they were kids, you wouldn’t find William and Harry indulging in steak tartare or lobster Thermidor.

Former royal chef Darren McGrady, who cooked for Queen Elizabeth II for 11 years before Princess Diana hired him in 1992, says William and Harry ate surprisingly normally growing up. “Although they were royal princes, they still had children’s palates,” says McGrady.

And Princess Diana wouldn’t make them use her diet secret for staying slim, either. “Princess Diana would say, ‘If you want fried chicken or loaded potato skins or hamburgers, that’s fine,’” says McGrady. So even royals feed their kids the same fatty foods we all do! Prince Harry even has a favorite fast-food order.

Princess Diana wouldn’t join her sons in their indulgent eating habits, but they thought she would. While she would eat poached chicken, which doesn’t require any fat to cook, Diana let William and Harry eat theirs roasted. McGrady would take the skin off the boys’ chicken so it would look like their mom’s to trick them into thinking their dinners were the same.

While Diana was lax about what her sons ate, their nanny was actually the stricter one. “The nanny always insisted they had their protein, roast chicken, and cabbage because cabbage was good for you,” says McGrady. But if the Princess gave William and Harry permission to eat their fatty favorites, McGrady would let them.

There was one time McGrady did insist on a healthier dinner one evening though. He found a note that said “Please give the boys pizza tonight instead of chicken,” signed with the nanny’s name. But there was something fishy—it was in a six-year-old’s handwriting. “I knew the boys wrote that, so I said ‘No, I’ll give them chicken,’” says McGrady.

If you want to keep your kids healthy, watch out for these toxic things in their favorite foods.

Marissa Laliberte
Marissa Laliberte-Simonian is a London-based associate editor with the global promotions team at WebMD’s Medscape.com and was previously a staff writer for Reader's Digest. Her work has also appeared in Business Insider, Parents magazine, CreakyJoints, and the Baltimore Sun. You can find her on Instagram @marissasimonian.