Le fait que les milliardaires puissent s’offrir des chefs personnels coûteux ou des aliments sains de grande qualité ne signifie pas qu’ils privilégient une alimentation saine. Si certains expérimentent les dernières tendances en matière de santé, telles que les régimes paléo et le végétalisme, d’autres milliardaires de la technologie aiment manger du chocolat au petit-déjeuner ou renoncer complètement à manger pendant quelques jours.

Richard Branson, fondateur du groupe Virgin, estime qu’il boit 20 tasses de thé par jour.

«Je ne suis pas sûr que j’aurais survécu sans le thé English Breakfast», a-t-il déclaré au Daily Mail en 2016. Branson commence sa journée par une salade de fruits et du muesli au petit-déjeuner. Parfois, le milliardaire mange du poisson fumé, semblable au hareng, à la place.

Branson vit sur son île privée de Necker, dans les Caraïbes. Le milliardaire remplit ses journées en faisant de l’exercice, en passant du temps avec sa famille et en participant à des réunions d’affaires, qu’il préfère programmer «à l’heure du déjeuner» pour «se remonter le moral».

Pour le dîner, il préfère les réunions de groupe «où l’on partage des histoires et où l’on génère des idées». Branson se couche vers 23 heures et dort environ six heures.

Le cofondateur d’Amazon, Jeff Bezos, a déclaré qu’il aimait prendre son temps le matin et prendre un petit-déjeuner sain.

Au début de l’année, la fiancée de Bezos, Lauren Sanchez, a révélé que Bezos faisait des pancakes tous les dimanches matin. Il sort à chaque fois le livre de cuisine de Betty Crocker et je lui dis : «OK, tu es la personne la plus intelligente du monde, pourquoi n’as-tu pas encore mémorisé la recette ?»». — a déclaré M. Sanchez au Wall Street Journal.

M. Bezos est également «extrêmement dévoué à l’entraînement» avec son entraîneur personnel Wes Okerson, a-t-elle ajouté.

Lorsqu’il ne mange pas de crêpes le dimanche, ses choix de petit-déjeuner peuvent être excentriques. Selon D Magazine, lors d’une réunion en 2014 avec une petite entreprise de commerce électronique qui a ensuite été rachetée par Amazon, Bezos a commandé un petit-déjeuner composé de poulpe méditerranéen avec des pommes de terre, du bacon, du yaourt à l’ail vert et un œuf poché. «Vous êtes le poulpe que je vais manger au petit-déjeuner», a déclaré Bezos à ses interlocuteurs. «Quand je regarde le menu, vous êtes quelque chose que je ne comprends pas, quelque chose que je n’ai jamais mangé. J’ai besoin de poulpe au petit-déjeuner».

Le fondateur de Microsoft, Bill Gates, aime tellement le Coca Light qu’il en boit trois ou quatre canettes par jour.

Earlier this year, Michelin-starred chef Jordi Cruz revealed that Gates once reserved his entire restaurant for two days and ordered only Diet Coke.

Gates’ eating habits aren’t much better than those of other billionaires. He eats cocoa puffs for breakfast. Although his ex-wife Melinda Gates has said in the past that he refuses to eat at all. He also apparently loves cheeseburgers. In a Reddit AMA in 2016, Gates replied, «Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger,» when asked about his favorite sandwich.

In the Netflix series Inside Bill’s Brain, Gates talked about his love for the powdered drink Tang.

Steve Jobs was known for his peculiar food preferences. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography, the Apple co-founder would sometimes eat only one or two foods at a time for weeks at a time.

At one point his diet consisted solely of carrots and apples. At one point in time he was a «fructurian» and ate only fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and grains. Jobs told Isaacson that he «renounced meat» when he was a freshman at Reed College and later gave up grains and dairy. Jobs apparently thought that because of his vegan diet, no odor emanated from his body. The Apple co-founder believed he didn’t need to use deodorant or shower regularly, according to Isaacson’s book. Jobs would sometimes starve himself for days at a time, which he said made him feel euphoric.

In 2003, when Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he tried to cure himself through diet, eating lots of fruit juices and carrots. Five years later, he reintroduced fish and other proteins back into his diet after having part of his pancreas removed. But by the time of his death in 2011, the Apple co-founder was on a liquid diet.

Tesla CEO Ilon Musk doesn’t have the healthiest diet. «If there was a way to not eat so I could work out more, I wouldn’t eat,» Musk said.

Musk used to skip breakfast — or eat a Mars bar or donut — to start his day. «I try to cut back on sweets, and I should have an omelet and coffee,» Musk said in 2017. But he doesn’t seem to have curbed the habit much. Earlier this year, the billionaire revealed on X that he eats a donut every morning. «I prefer to eat good food and live a shorter life,» Musk said in 2020.

Lunch is as inconsequential a meal for Musk as breakfast. The billionaire said that whatever his assistant brings him during meetings, he «absorbs it in five minutes.»

Instead, Musk focuses on dinner. In a Reddit AMA in 2015, Musk said his favorite cuisine is French and barbecue. Like Gates, Musk seems to be a fan of Diet Coke. In 2022, he wrote on X that he doesn’t care if Diet Coke «shortens life expectancy.»

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has experimented with different types of diets.

In 2011, he set himself a «personal challenge» to only eat meat from animals he had killed. His «kill what you eat» diet included goats, pigs, chickens and lobster. Zuckerberg wasn’t shy about sharing his loot with friends and house guests.

He once hosted Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and treated him to a slaughtered goat, Dorsey told Rolling Stone magazine. Dorsey said he remembers that the meat was served cold, so he limited himself to a salad for dinner.

In 2012, the former Twitter CEO revealed that his daily breakfast at the time consisted of two hard-boiled eggs with soy sauce. Dorsey was also into popular diet fads. He was a vegan, but too much beta-carotene (an orange pigment found in carrots) caused his skin to turn orange. So by 2013, he switched to the paleo diet, a hunter-gatherer regimen that prohibits refined sugar, grains, and processed foods.

In 2019, Dorsey said he eats only once a day during the work week and then fasts all weekend, following a dietary trend popular in Silicon Valley at the time called «intermittent fasting.» The Twitter co-founder said it helps him focus. By 2020, however, Dorsey said he was eating seven times a week — only dinner.

Back in 2015, Warren Buffett told Fortune that he is «one-quarter Coca-Cola,» adding that he drinks five servings a day.

Although he usually eats the first can with «potato stix,» he sometimes replaces it with ice cream. Buffett jokingly said he eats «like a six-year-old» because actuarial tables show that six-year-olds have the lowest mortality rate, Fortune notes. Bill Gates, a friend of Buffett’s, noted that his fellow billionaire eats mostly McDonald’s hamburgers and Oreo cookies.