This Is What The Trump Family Actually Eats

Since his inauguration as 45th president of the USA, Donald Trump's eating habits have become the stuff of legend. Nowadays, who isn't aware of his unabashed love of fast food, his penchant for a burnt steak, or his inexplicable need to drink a dozen Diet Cokes a day? To many people, Trump's diet is one of the things that defines his character — for better or worse.

But he's not the only Trump. The first family is made up of a number of distinctive personalities, and each has their own way of approaching their diets. You've got Melania by Donald's side, while moving further down the table you've got Ivanka, Eric, Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Tiffany, and Barron (though we're not too sure what Trump's youngest son has on his plate). It's a big family, and although one of them is renowned for his obsession with the unhealthier things on the menu, other Trumps have a love of salads, fruits, fine dining, hearty cooking, and even Slavic cuisine. This is what the Trump family really eats.

It might come as little surprise to find that Melania and Donald don't share too many eating habits, considering the — shall we say — fraught nature of their relationship. But even bearing that in mind, the contrast between their diets is stark. In a 2012 interview with Refinery29, Melania was asked about her daily food routine. "Well, in the morning, every morning, I have a smoothie with a few ingredients and a lot of vitamins in it — it's very healthy...," she explained, "but today I had a bit of oatmeal and juice."

Smoothie breakfasts with the occasional oatmeal treat is about as far as Melania could get from her husband's preferred way of starting the day. In fact, the president isn't a fan of breakfast at all, and often skips breakfast. If he does eat in the morning, it tends to be bacon and eggs (although he also has an affinity for cereals and Egg McMuffins from McDonald's).

Melania's break from her husband's food preferences doesn't end with breakfast, though. Even when it comes to snacking, the two are as different as chalk and cheese. Or maybe apples and Oreos? In her 2012 Refinery29 interview, Melania went deeper into her eating routine. "It's not a diet," she said, "I just like to eat healthy because I feel better and have more energy. I don't have a particular snack I always eat. If I would snack, I would snack on maybe fruit or a little bit of chocolate, because I think your body needs that, too."

In another interview with GQ, Melania revealed that she used to eat seven pieces of fruit a day while living in New York. Whether she keeps that number so high these days is anyone's guess, but it's a fair bet that she's doing a lot better than her husband, who demands that Air Force One be kept regularly stocked with potato chips and Oreos.

Like many of the Trumps, Melania isn't exactly afraid to hit the town and dine out every now and again. In a 2010 interview with New York Magazine, she admitted that her all-time favorite New York meal was the chicken Parmigianino at Jean Georges. This restaurant, located inside the Trump International Hotel & Tower, is a French haute cuisine joint overlooking Central Park. Probably no surprise to see a Trump singing the praises of a Trump restaurant though, is it?

Luckily for any Parmheads out there (we hope you don't call yourselves that), Jean Georges' recipe for a similar dish is available online. It's a pretty simple affair, made with chicken breast, grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, flour with egg whites (rather than the usual breadcrumbs), and is served with salsify in lemon butter. Pretty good stuff, if a little simple, but you've got to admit — it sounds a whole lot better than the crispy steaks that Donald seems to love.

Life in the world of politics can be grueling, and sometimes it becomes necessary — either for simplicity's sake or to make a point — to eat out whilst traveling across America. With that in mind, Melania isn't averse to stopping into a fast food joint every now and again. In 2017, while visiting Texas to meet with victims of Hurricane Harvey, she and Karen Pence showed up at Whataburger for a quick bite, taking the time to buy fries for their accompanying press pool. Just what they ordered for themselves remains a mystery, but considering Whataburger is the closest thing Texas has to an official state cult, it was probably a good choice.

One can only imagine, though, what Donald — a man who practically bleeds McDonald's — would have made of all this. It's unlikely that Melania's lunch trip convinced him of Whataburger's qualities, considering Donald's loyalty to the Golden Arches is so absolute that he once fed Big Macs, chicken nuggets, and Filet-O-Fish to the Clemson University football team after their big national championship victory.

Although Ivanka might be all about healthy eating these days (more on that in a second) that wasn't always the case. In fact, her diet once wasn't too different from her father's. According to an interview with Shape magazine, Ivanka once "ate like a teenager... carbs three times a day, usually in the form of pasta or pizza." After becoming pregnant, however, everything changed — and now her diet is far healthier than it was before. Just ignore the whole juice cleansing phase, which she admitted did not go well. "I tried a juice cleanse," she said, "and it was a total disaster. For the eight hours that I lasted, I felt like I was on the brink of starvation."

Considering Ivanka appears to be the Trump patriarch's favorite child by quite some way, the idea of her once eating just like her dear ol' dad doesn't exactly come as a shock. The only real difference, we suppose, is that she managed to quit. 

So how does Ivanka's diet look these days? In a word: better. She starts off her day with lemon and water, a cup of coffee, and follows that up with a family breakfast of Greek yogurt with berries, cottage cheese, or "fancy oatmeal" for the kids (which is topped with anything from chia seeds to nuts to flaxseed to goji berries). Lunch and dinner tend to consist of protein-based foods such as salmon, chicken, or salad. Treats, when they do appear, take the form of strawberry ice cream or Italian food at Frankies Spuntino in New York.

On top of all this, Ivanka also regularly exercises. She runs and has been known to attend spin classes. She also meditates for twenty minutes twice a day. All in all, that's about as far from "eating like a teenager" as you can get — and even further from the diet of Donald. Probably for the best, if we're honest.

In 2018, Donald Trump Jr. visited southern Louisiana to raise funds for the state Attorney General Jeff Landry. In between hunting alligators and schmoozing with donors, Don Jr. gave a speech in which he revealed his love of the state's culinary traditions. "I'm excited to come back down here again," he told attendees, "and I have a lot of friends in the area — people I've met either through fishing in Venice or hunting up north. It's just great to come back here, because you guys do have the best food in the country."

On this point at least, many would agree with Don Jr. — the food of Louisiana is revered across America, and includes such mainstay dishes as jambalaya, beignets, po' boy, crawfish, blackened fish, doberge cake, cracklins, cochon de lait, and, of course, gumbo. Although some of those might seem kind of alien if you're not familiar with the state's cooking scene, trust us — they're all damn good. Fair play on this one, Don.

Not much else is known about Don Jr.'s actual eating habits, but he did at least make clear one thing he doesn't much care for in 2018, when he took to Instagram to make a factually inaccurate attack on vegetarianism. The hastily-assembled meme, which depicted enough bacon to kill a small horse, was captioned: "There hasn't been one single bacon recall in 2018, but there have been several vegetable recalls... just saying."

This was in reference to the recalls made by the FDA on a number of vegetable products (including corn and lettuce) in 2018. Unfortunately, Don Jr.'s statement was basically entirely untrue. Numerous bacon products were recalled by the FDA in 2018, as Newsweek points out, while 30,000 pounds of sausage were recalled when it became clear that some products were at risk of containing metal fragments.

Like the rest of his family, Eric Trump — Don Jr.'s younger brother — often eats out on business. In a 2008 interview with Grub Street, long before the presidency was ever in sight for Donald, Eric laid out his food routine on a recent trip to Qatar. Shortly after arriving in the country, he, Don Jr. (or Donnie, as he calls him), and Ivanka ate three lobster tails before indulging in a meal with high-ranking officials consisting of traditional foods like caviar, lamb chops, and Arabian soup. In Abu Dhabi, they ate from a buffet which included lobster, chicken, rice, calamari, and salads. Later, back in New York, he ate tuna salad with grilled vegetables from Trump Grill before a home-cooked salmon dinner. The day after that, he ate a Trump steak during a business lunch, and sushi for dinner. Other dishes Eric ate that week in New York included chicken Caesar wraps, grilled chicken breasts, and Cobb salads. 

Quite the smorgasbord, we've got to say — and a fascinating insight into the regular eating habits of a Manhattan businessman.

Beyond the fancy business dinners, however, Eric is apparently quite the accomplished cook. He was first inspired in the kitchen by his maternal grandmother, whose cooking was so good that the Trumps would crave her food for weeks after she left. Apparently, his time in the kitchen has paid off, and friends allegedly often ask that Eric cook for them rather than going out to dinner. (He also used to cook for his roommates during his time at Georgetown University.) The bulk of the food Eric cooks comes from Slavic tradition, and includes "the great Slavic meals, all laden with cream cheese and sour cream and heavy cream. Many of these dishes are a heart attack in a pot."

Some of the dishes he might regularly make includes borscht (a kind of beet soup), breaded cauliflower, and strawberry dumplings — all of which were specialities of his grandmother. Sweet, ain't it?

Being Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner probably keeps to many of the same eating habits as his wife — but he also has something of a background in cooking himself. A report by the Boston Globe revealed that he was once made cooking editor of Harvard's Current Magazine.

The magazine covered all kinds of things including news and campus life, but no clips of his work as cooking editor seem to have surfaced, and little is known about just what he did in the role. One Boston Globe reporter did, however, suggest that Kushner makes a mean chicken tetrazzini, having made one for guests at the university's Pforzheimer House back in 2001. Perhaps the world is all the poorer for having lost out on the Jared Kushner who pursues a career in food journalism; perhaps not. But we'd hazard a guess that he'd have had just as easy a time getting into New York's haute restaurants as he does getting his hands on state secrets.

From the looks of it, Jared's eating habits certainly aren't too far off those of his wife, and that means keeping healthy. In fact, he keeps things so healthy that it's put him on the receiving end of mockery from his colleagues/enemies. In his tell-all memoir Let Me Finish, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie took aim at Kushner for his choice of diet — according to Christie, he had been at lunch with Kushner and Donald Trump in 2017, and Kushner, apparently, was enjoying one of his "typical salads" at the time. We know: burn.

The two men aren't exactly on friendly terms: Christie was the one who prosecuted Kushner's father, Charles, on 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign donations — putting him away for 14 months in 2005. The grudge continued for years afterwards, finally culminating with the devastating attack made by Christie towards Kushner's love of salads in his book. Heavy stuff.

Oh yeah, her! Tiffany Trump may not exactly be at the forefront of the family's public dealings, but she is a Trump nonetheless. So let's dig in.

Tiffany made headlines in June 2018 when, in the midst of her father's — ahem — "handling" of the border crisis, she and her mother Marla Maples enjoyed a lunch of Mexican food in Midtown, New York. Surrounded by the Secret Service, Tiffany apparently ordered the vegan "Impossible Taco" dish, followed by a "By the Way" cake dessert. The Impossible Taco consists of plant-based beef, black bean mash, and vegan lime crema in an organic blue corn crunchy shell. Apparently, the other patrons of Taco Dumbo seemed basically okay with these two Trumps making a visit to their establishment — an increasingly rare occurrence in some parts of the U.S., where Republicans are routinely chased out of restaurants due to their ties to the Trump Administration. Then again, maybe it's just that nobody recognized them.

Taking her Instagram at face value, it seems that Tiffany is quite the fan of desserts, too, with some of her favorite sweet dishes appearing to include crème brûlée, cakes, and tea. No surprise here, of course — after all, her father is renowned for his love of all things sugary. Who else could come out of a summit with China's President Xi and only be able to talk about the chocolate cake they ate? The toffee apple doesn't fall far from the tree, after all.

Other favorite dishes for Tiffany include caviar and sushi, as well as Indian food. All sorts, basically. If nothing else, this would imply a kind of desire for variation in the food she eats which is pretty much entirely lacking in her mostly unadventurous father. So there's that, at least.

Being as busy as Melania supposedly is, it can be understandably hard to find a moment to prepare a proper, home-cooked meal. Considering who her husband is, it'd probably be equally difficult for him to sit down and eat it. When pushed on the topic, however, Melania has revealed what the family's meal of choice might be should any future sit-downs occur.

At a 2019 town hall in Las Vegas, Melania gave us some insight into the goings on of her daily routine. When asked what she'd cook for herself and the president if she had anything at her disposal, she pointed out that she hasn't actually done that yet, since she hasn't had time. But if the family had to choose one meal as a group, she suggested — after a lengthy silence — "maybe spaghetti." Somehow, though, you can't help but feel that her answer wasn't delivered with the utmost conviction.