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The weird eating habits of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and other tech billionaires

Mark Zuckerberg (centre), CEO of Facebook, says he ‘doesn’t like to waste time on small decisions’ so simply eats whatever he feels he wants to eat on the day. Photo: Facebook

Just because billionaires have the money to pay for pricey personal chefs or high-end healthy foods doesn’t mean that they are following diets that are good for them.

Some of the richest people in the technology industry have some pretty terrible – or bizarre – eating habits.

While some experiment with the latest health fads, such as veganism and the Paleo diet – a dietary plan based on foods similar to what might have been eaten in the Palaeolithic era, during the early part of the Stone Age – there are other tech billionaires who enjoy eating chocolate bars for breakfast or skip eating altogether for days.

So even though there are some wealthy techies whose diets you will want to copy to replicate their levels of success, there’s no guarantee they will put you in good health.

Check out some of the diets and foods that tech billionaires swear by:

Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, the venture capital conglomerate, estimates he drinks 20 cups of tea a day.

“I’m not sure how I’d survive without English Breakfast tea,” Branson said in 2016.

Photo: Business Insider

Branson said in 2010 that he likes to eat fruit salad and muesli for breakfast. Occasionally, he will also eat kippers, a herring-like fish.

The entrepreneur lives on his private Caribbean island, Necker Island.

The billionaire likes to fill his days with exercise, time with his family, and business meetings, which he prefers to schedule “over lunchtime” to help “lighten the mood”.

For dinner, he prefers to hold group meals “where stories are shared and ideas are born”.

Richard Branson (front left) enjoys a group dinner on Necker Island. Photo: Virgin Unite

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, the e-commerce, cloud computing and artificial intelligence company, has said he avoids early-morning meetings so that he has time to eat a healthy “leisurely” breakfast without any “fatty convenience foods”.

In the past he said he liked to use the extra time to spend his mornings with his family – his soon-to-be former wife, Mackenzie Bezos, and their four children – but that is likely to have changed now that they are getting divorced.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, with his wife, Mackenzie Bezos, who are getting divorced.

Billionaires are known for being eccentric, and that doesn’t stop with their eating choices.

In a meeting with a company Amazon had considered (and eventually went ahead and) acquired, Bezos reportedly ordered a breakfast of Mediterranean octopus with potatoes, bacon, green garlic yogurt and a poached egg.

Later in the meeting, Bezos used his breakfast as a metaphor for Amazon’s business strategy.

He said: “You’re the octopus that I’m having for breakfast. When I look at the menu, you’re the thing I don’t understand, the thing I’ve never had. I must have the breakfast octopus.”

Investor Mark Cuban, who owns the American basketball team, Dallas Mavericks, said in 2014 his breakfast consists of a cup of coffee and two sweet biscuits from a company called Alyssa’s Cookies. These biscuits are high in protein and fibre and low in carbohydrates.

Mark Cuban. Photo: AP

Cuban has said these biscuits are “all I will eat any more”. He enjoys them so much that he helped launch the business, and has also invested in the company.

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, the computer software and consumer electronics company, has said that he loves Diet Coke so much that he drinks three or four [cans] a day.

“All those cans also add up to something like 35 pounds [16kg] of aluminium a year,” he wrote in 2014.

Bill Gates drinks from a glass of purified water, rather than Diet Coke. Photo: Gates Foundation

Gates’ eating habits aren’t much better.

He has said he eats Cocoa Puffs cereal for breakfast, but his wife, Melinda, has said he skips the meal altogether.

If you get the lunchtime slot with Bill Gates, you’re eating [cheese]burgers

Gates also apparently loves cheeseburgers. Joe Cerrell, managing director of global policy and advocacy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has said that anyone who has lunch with Gates should expect to have cheeseburgers, “no matter who you are”.

Bill and Melinda Gates. Photo: AP

“If you get the lunchtime slot with Bill, you’re eating [cheese]burgers,” Cerrell said in 2016.

“Someone will always be sent to get bags of McDonald’s. I don’t think Melinda lets him have them at home.”

Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of the technology company, Apple, was known for his odd eating habits.

Jobs, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011, aged 56, would sometimes eat only one or two foods at a time, for weeks.

At one point, his diet was strictly carrots and apples. At another time, he was a “fruitarian” – a diet where he could eat only fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and grains.

Photo: Photo: AP

Jobs apparently thought that his vegan diet caused him not to emit any sort of body odour, which he took to mean he did not need to wear deodorant or shower regularly.

Sometimes, Jobs would fast, using the days of not eating to “create feelings of euphoria and ecstasy”.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, the online social media and social networking service company, is not too fussy about what he has for breakfast.

He says he will eat whatever he feels he would like to eat that day, because he “doesn’t like to waste time on small decisions”.

Mark Zuckerberg chooses what he will have to eat. Photo: Mark Zuckerberg

Yet that doesn't mean Zuckerberg hasn't experimented with any wild diets.

He famously set a “personal challenge” for himself in 2011 to only eat meat from animals he had killed himself.

His “kill what you eat” diet included goats, pigs, chickens and lobsters.

Zuckerberg was not shy about sharing the food he had killed himself with his friends and house guests.

He once invited Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, the online news and social networking service, over for a meal and treated him to meat from a goat he had killed.

Dorsey said he remembers that the goat was served cold, so he stuck to salad for dinner.

Jack Dorsey (left) and Mark Zuckerberg, who once ate meat from a goat that Zuckerberg had killed himself. Photo: Reuters

Yet it's not as if Dorsey is known for standard eating practices.

In 2012, he revealed his daily breakfast consisted of two hard-boiled eggs with soy sauce.

Dorsey has also dabbled in mainstream diet fads.

He used to be a vegan, but too much beta-carotene (the orange pigment found in carrots) caused his skin to turn orange.

In 2013, Dorsey was following the Paleo diet, the hunter-gathering regimen that forbids the eating of refined sugars, grains and processed foods.

However, more recently, Dorsey has been “playing with fasting for some time”.

The day feels so much longer when not broken up by breakfast/lunch/dinner
Jack Dorsey, founder, Twitter

He tweeted in January that he has been fasting for 22 hours a day, and some days he won't eat at all.

“Biggest thing I notice is how much time slows down,” Dorsey said. “The day feels so much longer when not broken up by breakfast/lunch/dinner.”

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, the electric car maker, and SpaceX, the aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, who is known for working 80 to 90 hours a week, doesn’t stick to a strict diet.

He has said he doesn’t usually eat breakfast, but when he does, he’ll eat a Mars chocolate bar – apt for a man who's trying to get to the red planet.

“I’m trying to cut down on sweet stuff, and I should have an omelette and coffee,” Musk says.

Photo: Tech Insider/Recode/Nasa

His lunch is usually just as inconsequential a meal as his breakfast. Whatever his assistant brings him during meetings, he’ll “inhale it in five minutes”, he says.

Instead, Musk focuses on dinner, which often takes place while working.

He said in 2015 that his favourite types of food are French cuisine and barbecues.

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This article originally appeared on Business Insider.

Luxury CEOs
  • Many of the world’s leading technology billionaires have admitted to having bizarre eating habits and following less-than-healthy diets