The Surprising Reason Queen Elizabeth II Sends Fruit Back if It’s Served With Her Breakfast

Queen Elizabeth II has some of the best and most experienced chefs on hand to cook her up anything she wants, anytime she wants. But when it comes to breakfast, the monarch keeps things simple and has the same thing every morning.

Here’s what the royal family matriarch eats for breakfast every day and the surprising reason she has sent fruit back if it’s served with her morning meal.

What Queen Elizabeth eats for breakfast and why she’ll send fruit back

Queen Elizabeth doesn’t wake up to an alarm clock every morning like the rest of us. Instead, she is awoken by bagpipes playing outside her window. Once she rises, her maid serves her Earl Grey tea with biscuits.

After her morning bath, she heads to breakfast and almost always has cereal. The queen’s favorite brand is Special K, which she keeps in an airtight Tupperware container so they stay fresher longer.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Queen Elizabeth has gained a reputation over the years as being quite frugal. In fact, her former chef Darren McGrady relayed a story to The Telegraph about her sending back a lemon served as a garnish with her cornflakes but not because there was something wrong with it. The monarch told the kitchen staff that the fruit can be used again for something else.

Other times she won’t eat certain fruits

McGrady revealed another time the queen will send fruit back and that has to do with the time of year.

“You can send strawberries every day to the queen during summer at Balmoral and she’ll never say a word,” McGrady recalled.“Try including strawberries on the menu in January and she’ll scrub out the line and say don’t dare send me genetically modified strawberries.”

McGrady also stated that members of the royal family eat their fruit in an unusual way by using silverware. Instead of eating it with their hands, they cut the fruit up with a knife and fork.

“Grapes are the most popular as they are the easiest to eat and cut into smaller bunches of four or five grapes,” he said.

Princess Anne is particular about her breakfast fruit

The queen’s daughter, Princess Anne, is particular about the fruit served for her breakfast.

This is especially true with bananas as the Princess Royal specifically requests to be given ones that are blackened. Yep, you read that correctly. While most people use overripe bananas when making banana bread, Anne enjoys them in her fruit salad every morning.

“She almost always preferred the bananas almost black — overripe — because they digested easier,” McGrady told TODAY.