since becoming the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle has had to to make various lifestyle changes - from switching to nude nail polish to minimizing the public displays of affection with Prince Harry.
However, one change the new royal may not have expected was the absence of her favorite food, pasta, on the menu at Buckingham Palace - due to the Queen’s dislike of starchy foods.
According to former royal chef Darren McGrady, the Queen avoids pasta and potatoes, opting instead for grilled fish or chicken and in-season vegetables - which may have been a difficult adjustment for Markle, who once told Delish that her favorite pasta dish, made with courgette, is “filthy, sexy mush.”
Apart from the carbohydrate-ban, the monarch and her newest granddaughter-in-law have a lot in common when it comes to food preferences.
Both prefer to adhere to a relatively healthy lifestyle, with the 92-year-old Queen snacking on bananas, which she eats in a royal manner - by cutting “off the bottoms and cut the banana lengthwise, and then cut the banana into tiny slices to eat with a fork.”
The Duchess of Sussex also keeps her diet healthy by sticking to a mostly-vegan diet, with the occasional exception.
But although chef McGrady said that the Queen “eats to live” - in comparison to her husband, who “lives to eat” - both the monarch and Markle have their vices.
For the Queen, chocolate biscuit cake is reportedly her favorite dessert, and she will eat the entire thing.
“She'll take a small slice every day until eventually there is only one tiny piece, but you have to send that up, she wants to finish the whole of that cake,” McGrady told Recipes Plus of the Queen’s fondness for the decadent cake, before revealing that if a piece happens to be leftover when journeying back to Windsor Castle, the senior chef would follow with the slice.
Markle’s favorite dessert is a “big, beautiful red wine” mainly Tignanello - which the former Suits actress would choose over anything chocolate and named her former lifestyle blog The Tig after.
In addition to a ban on pasta, all of the royals follow a strict diet of minimal onions or garlic - as their duties require them to frequently meet people, and no rare meat or shellfish due to the risk of food poisoning.
The foods the royals are actually allowed to eat are served on China dating back to the early 1800s and silver knives and forks coated with pure gold.