Chocolate for breakfast and freshly-killed goat for dinner - here are the diets of some of the most notable tech billionaires
Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, estimates he drinks 20 cups of tea a day. "I'm not sure how I'd survive without English Breakfast tea," Branson told the Daily Mail in 2016.
Branson said back in 2010 that he eats fruit salad and muesli for breakfast. Occasionally, he'll also eat kipper, a herring-like fish.
Source: Business Insider
Branson lives on his private Caribbean island, Necker Island. The billionaire fills 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."
Source: Virgin Group
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said he avoids early morning meetings so he has time to eat a healthy "leisurely" breakfast without any "fatty convenience foods." He's said he uses the extra time to spend mornings with his wife Mackenzie and their four children, but that's likely changed a bit considering the couple recently announced their divorce.
Source: Business Insider
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 through with) acquiring, Bezos reportedly ordered a breakfast of Mediterranean octopus with potatoes, bacon, green garlic yogurt, and a poached egg.
Source: Business Insider
Later in the meeting, Bezos used his breakfast as a metaphor for Amazon's business strategy: "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."
Source: Business Insider
Investor Mark Cuban said in 2014 his breakfast consists of a cup of coffee and two cookies from a company called Alyssa's Cookies. These cookies are high protein, high fiber, and low carb.
Source: D Magazine
Cuban has said these cookies are "all I will eat anymore." He enjoys the cookies so much that he helped launch the business, and has invested in the company.
Source: Business Insider
Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said that he loves Diet Coke, so much that he drinks three or four a day. "All those cans also add up to something like 35 pounds of aluminum a year," Gates wrote in 2014.
Source: Quartz
Gates' eating habits aren't much better. He's said he eats Cocoa Puffs for breakfast, but his wife Melinda says he skips the meal altogether. He also apparently loves cheeseburgers. Joe Cerrell, a managing director at the Gates Foundation, has said that anyone who has lunch with Gates should expect to have cheeseburgers, "no matter who you are."
Sources: Business Insider, Telegraph
"If you get the lunchtime slot with Bill [Gates], you’re eating burgers," Cerrell told the Telegraph in 2016. "Someone will always be sent to get bags of McDonald’s. I don’t think Melinda lets him have them at home."
!["If you get the lunchtime slot with Bill [Gates], you’re eating burgers," Cerrell told the Telegraph in 2016. "Someone will always be sent to get bags of McDonald’s. I don’t think Melinda lets him have them at home."](https://staticbiassets.in/thumb/msid-68334388,width-700,height-525,imgsize-1342483/if-you-get-the-lunchtime-slot-with-bill-gates-youre-eating-burgers-cerrell-told-the-telegraph-in-2016-someone-will-always-be-sent-to-get-bags-of-mcdonalds-i-dont-think-melinda-lets-him-have-them-at-home-.jpg)
Source: Telegraph
The late Steve Jobs was known for his odd eating habits. The Apple cofounder 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 Jobs could only eat fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and grains.
Source: NBC News
Jobs apparently thought that his vegan diet caused him not to emit any sort of body odor, which he took to mean he didn't need to wear deodorant or shower regularly. Sometimes, Jobs would fast, using the days of not eating to "create feelings of euphoria and ecstasy."
Source: NBC News
For Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, breakfast isn't something he's too picky about. He'll just eat whatever he's feeling for that day, because he "doesn't like to waste time on small decisions."
Source: Business Insider
But that doesn't mean Zuckerberg hasn't experimented with any wild diets. The Facebook CEO 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.
Source: Fortune
Zuckerberg wasn't shy about sharing the food he had killed himself with friends and house guests. He once hosted Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and treated him to goat he had killed. Dorsey said he remembers that the goat was served cold, so he stuck to salad for dinner.
Source: Business Insider
But it's not as if Dorsey is known for standard eating practices. In 2012, the Twitter CEO revealed his daily breakfast was two hard-boiled eggs with soy sauce.
Source: Forbes
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 eating refined sugars, grains, and processed foods.
Source: Business Insider
But more recently, Dorsey has been "playing with fasting for some time." He tweeted in January that he's 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 tweeted. "The day feels so much longer when not broken up by breakfast/lunch/dinner."
Source: Twitter
For a man that works 80 to 90 hours a week, Tesla and SpaceX CEO doesn't necessarily adhere to a strict diet. Musk has said he doesn't usually eat breakfast, but when he does, he'll eat a Mars 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 omelet and coffee,” Musk says.
Source: Entrepreneur
Lunch is just as inconsequential a meal as breakfast is for Musk — whatever his assistant brings him during meetings, he'll "inhale it in five minutes." Instead, Musk focuses on dinner, which often take place over business. Musk said in a 2015 Reddit AMA that his favorite foods are French cuisine and barbecue.
Sources: Entrepreneur, CBS News
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