Queen Elizabeth is the UK’s best-travelled monarch and has been to all four corners of the globe on royal trips. There are plenty of rules and regulations that are in place when the Queen travels. One thing that the monarch will never do when away concerns what she eats. A former private chef who has served the Royal Family revealed the detail about the Queen’s eating habits.
Queen Elizabeth will not eat garlic while abroad and refuses to have it on the menu.
Chef Darren O’Grady, who once served the Royals, told Marie Clare: “The Queen would never have garlic on the menu.
”She hated the smell of it, she hated the taste of it.”
This strict rule is also in place to avoid giving the Queen bad breath as she will have to greet a number of important people during royal tours.
Telegraph reporter Gordon Rayner, who has attended 20 royal tours, confirmed this.
“The Master of the Household department will be in the reconnaissance party to tell foreign chefs not to cook anything with garlic or too much spice for fear of giving the Queen bad breath,” Rayner wrote in The Telegraph.
John Higgins, a former chef at Buckingham Palace who cooked for the Queen, reiterated to the National Post, stating: “I suppose, in case you get the royal burp.”
Not all food rules are related to breath however and can prove a matter of life and death.
Foreign chefs are told not to cook shellfish or anything that could cause poisoning.
This isn’t just the Queen, however, as the entire royal family is prohibited from eating it.
According to the BBC, the decision is down to the chance of food poisoning.
“The royal entourage likes progress to run smoothly, free from the disruptions of gastronomic indisposition. Hence the ban on shellfish.”
However, if the worst does happen, emergencies will be responded to right away as the Queen’s doctor is always nearby when she travels.
The medical practitioner is a Royal Navy doctor and the Telegraph reports that he will always be carrying a bulky medical bag containing a mobile defibrillator and emergency medicine.
The doctor will also have carefully researched where the nearest hospital is to the monarch at all times.
If the Queen is travelling to an area where food safety cannot be guaranteed, then supplies will be taken with them. Foods will be brought from Britain as well as supplies of bottled water.
Both Prince Charles and the Queen also both pack a very interesting item when travelling abroad.
If the senior royals are visiting a country where a reliable blood supply is questionable, then a pack of their own blood will be included, always following in their convoy.
