The world is still mourning the death of Apple CEO Steve Jobs while also praising his many contributions to technology. Details of Jobs’ life, including some of his strange eating habits, are making their way into the public eye with the release of his biography Steve Jobs.
The book, written by Walter Isaacson, offers some fascinating information about Jobs’ bizarre eating habits. It is said that Jobs was heavily affected by the book Diet for a Small Planet while he was in college, and decided to give up all meat because of it. This book also influenced Steve Jobs’ tendencies to engage in extreme diets. Some of these diets included purges, fasts and only eating one or two foods for long periods of time.
In 1977, Jobs ate only fruit, shunned deodorant and bathed only once a week. As Jobs got older, the odd eating habits continued. “He would spend weeks eating the same thing – carrot salad with lemon, or just apples – and then suddenly spurn that food and declare that he had stopped eating it,” Isaacson notes.
After his liver transplant, Jobs would eat only fruit smoothies. “He would eat only fruit smoothies, and he would demand seven or eight of them be lined up so he could find an option that might satisfy him.”
Jobs’ doctor finally told him, “Stop thinking of this as food. Start thinking of it as medicine.” Instead of eating for nutrition and health, at the end of his life, Jobs wanted to fast when he needed to eat. His wife would get angry when he would come to the table and just stare silently at his lap. “I wanted to force him to eat. It was incredibly tense at home,” she said.
Jobs’ motivation for such restrictive food practices isn’t known, but the need for control is obvious. Whether the state of the food industry, weight loss, or an eating disorder was the primary motivator, this new information on Steve Jobs’ diet will support the importance of a healthy diet and exercise plan.