King Charles eats half an avocado for lunch every day. That’s nuts

Breaking a lifelong habit, King Charles has begun eating a light lunch every day. With just one ingredient.

Half an avocado.

King Charles III, meets former Samoan rugby player Freddie Tuilagi during a reception to celebrate the Commonwealth Diaspora of the United Kingdom, in London on October 2.Credit: AP

Queen Camilla wants her husband to keep up his strength after cancer treatment. So he’s reportedly agreed with “some reluctance” to her edict, despite having always avoided lunch like the plague.

Anyone wondering how the other half lives? Or what happens to the other half of the avocado?

The King, who I adore from afar, has castles, Aston Martins, his face on stamps and money. Yet his lunch is smaller than most people’s breakfast garnish.

I’ve long been fascinated by the diets of the uber rich, including the King, who until now has preferred a brisk walk at lunchtime rather than food. Charles’ typical breakfast is fruit, eggs or muesli with a dash of linseed, according to Tina Brown’s 2022 book The Palace Papers.

King Charles now eats half an avocado for lunch every day.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

He told the BBC he gives meat and fish a miss on two days of the week, and also cuts out dairy on one of those days. This is a man who will never need Ozempic, a man who I reckon could still rock the safari suit he wore on a 1985 Australian tour.

Championing sustainable fashion is a blast of a legacy, but the more curious thing is that in a world where Charles could have literally anything placed on his plate by Michelin-starred chefs, he chooses half an avo.

It’s a fascinating, almost comedic paradox: the people with the most access to the world’s bounty have whittled their diets down to minimalist meals.

Is the weirdest thing about the super-rich that they’ve created a world where having everything means wanting nothing?

Victoria Beckham, 50, eats the same meal every day.Credit: Getty Images

Victoria Beckham has eaten the same meal since 1997: fish and steamed veggies. “The only time she’s probably ever shared something on my plate was ... one of my favourite evenings,” her husband David said.

Yep. One single evening of madness.

Jennifer Aniston fasts for 16 hours daily, then eats the same thing: “Some form of vegetables or salad with protein – pretty basic.” She’s said she “can have one M&M, one chip”. That makes me want to cram handfuls of both into my mouth for between five and 13 hours.

Gwyneth Paltrow follows healthy but restrictive eating regimens even on holiday: “In most places you can get clean vegetables and a clean piece of fish, or a green juice.” Worth travelling for then.

Confession: I’m a deeply closeted fattist who, like the rich, prefers to eat the same thing almost every day (eggs on toast, ham salad roll, salmon, broccoli, two mochi balls and my body weight in chocolate.) Saves time and money during those decades I don’t have Chef on hand.

And I worry about how we’re scared to call out being overweight as a social, economic and health problem because it’s seen as body-shaming. Even at a time when two in three Australian adults are overweight or obese. In 1980, the obesity figure was 16 per cent.

But. When most of us plebs diet, it’s because that week in Bali is looming. I wonder if for the uber rich it’s a way to broadcast their resources and self-discipline.

It’s as if having the option of indulgence makes indulgence itself taboo.

Most of us eat for pleasure, but for Charles, Victoria and their fellow diet-restricted elite, food seems to be about proving they can resist the temptation to enjoy their wealth in the most basic of ways: by eating a proper, satisfying meal.

With his monkish eating habits, Charles might live to 150 if he can beat cancer. And it might give him time to envy the commoners like you and me.

To imagine the joy of sinking his teeth into a fish and chips wrapped in paper, grease staining his hands, vinegar biting at his tongue, instead of settling for a restrained existence where the rich somehow deprive themselves in the most luxurious ways possible.

Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.

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