<p class="ingestion featured-caption">Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI</p><ul class="summary-list"><li>I recreated over 150 <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/presidents-favorite-food-dishes-white-house-2019-5">recipes from politicians</a> before I started spending a day eating just like them.</li><li>The <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/former-white-house-chef-talks-about-presidential-meals">White House diets</a> of the six living US presidents are wildly different and sometimes shocking.</li></ul><p>Politicians, just like the rest of us, have to eat.</p><p>Occasionally, politicians release their own recipes carefully crafted to fit their brand and background. I started <a target="_blank" href="http://cookinwithcongress.com">Cookin' with Congress</a> to explore those recipes, recreating and tasting these dishes — the good, the bad, and the ugly.</p><p>After spending a few years getting to know politicians through the homespun recipes (like Mitch McConnell's flavorless <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cookinwithcongress.com/cookin-with-congress-recipes/2020/6/7/senator-mitch-mcconnells-hoppin-john">Hoppin' John</a> or Mark Warner's sopping wet <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/politics/mark-warner-tuna-melt/index.html">Tuna Melt</a>), I began to wonder what the most powerful people in America ate when they weren't being monitored.</p><p>I started at the top, diving into community cookbooks, archival articles, news footage, and excellent books on the topic. Eventually, I discovered the daily diets of every living president: Joe Biden, Donald Trump, <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/barack-michelle-obama-relationship-timeline">Barack Obama</a>, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter.</p><p>It wasn't enough to simply learn about their food preferences — I had to eat like each of them, too. After creating a diet inspired by the knowledge available to me, I did.</p><p>Here's my highly subjective ranking of the daily eating habits of our <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/presidents-homes-after-white-house-2020-7">living US presidents</a>, from worst to best.</p>