What Did Steve Jobs Eat Every Day?

December 19, 2025 •

3 min read

According to his biography by Walter Isaacson, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had peculiar and obsessive eating habits that included periods of extreme dietary restriction and fasting. This intense and minimalist approach to food was a lifelong experiment for Jobs, who was famously a vegetarian and at times, a strict fruitarian.

Quick Summary

Steve Jobs followed extreme vegetarian and fruitarian diets, often eating only one or two foods for weeks at a time, and practiced periods of fasting, as detailed in his biography. These habits were driven by a belief in minimalism and bodily cleansing, though his eating became more complex after a pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

Key Points

Extreme Dietary Cycles: Jobs famously alternated between highly restrictive fruitarian diets and extended periods of fasting throughout his life.
Inspiration for Apple: The name "Apple" came to him while on a fruitarian diet, reflecting his affinity for the simple fruit.
Mucusless Diet Influence: His most extreme phase was heavily influenced by Arnold Ehret's Mucusless Diet Healing System, leading him to eliminate all animal products and starchy foods.
Refusal of Medical Advice: After his cancer diagnosis, he tried to heal himself with his restrictive diet, delaying surgery and ignoring medical professionals' recommendations for more protein-rich food.
Minimalist Eating: His approach to food mirrored his design philosophy—simple, pure, and stripped of unnecessary elements.
Family Conflict: His extreme eating habits caused tension with his family, particularly his wife, Laurene Powell, who worried about his health.
Orange Hue: Due to his high consumption of carrots, his skin sometimes took on an orange tint from an excess of beta-carotene.

A Lifetime of Dietary Extremes

From his youth, Steve Jobs developed a compulsive and often extreme relationship with food. He was deeply influenced by diet-related books, including Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet, which cemented his lifelong vegetarianism. Later, Arnold Ehret’s Mucusless Diet Healing System pushed him toward a restrictive fruitarian and raw food regimen. Jobs's dietary habits were not consistent but came in fanatic waves, often cycling through periods of severe restriction and occasional indulgence.

The Fruitarian Phase

Inspired by Ehret's theories, Jobs experimented with a fruitarian diet, consuming mainly fruits, nuts, and seeds.

During this time, he would eat just one or two foods, such as carrots or apples, for weeks on end.
An anecdote from his biography mentions that he once became so consumed with eating carrots and carrot juice that his skin took on a slight orange hue.
This particular diet was also the inspiration for the name of his company, Apple.

The Asceticism of Fasting

Jobs was also a proponent of fasting, which he believed provided a sense of spiritual clarity and euphoria. He would fast for several days at a time, breaking the fast with leafy greens and water. This practice was part of a larger personal philosophy that saw asceticism as a path to heightened awareness and pleasure from restraint. He applied the same minimalist logic to his work, stripping down technology to its essential elements, much like he stripped down his diet.

Family Life and a Taste for Organic Food

Even after marrying Laurene Powell, a fellow vegan, Jobs maintained his picky and obsessive habits. While his wife and family were often more moderate, the household food remained centered on organic, natural ingredients. Laurene even founded her own organic food company, Terravera. Jobs’s fastidious nature was on display during meals; his daughter Lisa recalls an instance where he spat out soup upon learning it contained butter. Despite his preferences, family meals included simple, healthy options like pasta with garden-fresh tomatoes and basil.

The Diet's Impact and Post-Diagnosis Changes

While Jobs's diet was famously unconventional, its impact, particularly after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis in 2003, is a subject of much discussion.

Diet Before and After Cancer Diagnosis


Aspect	Before Pancreatic Cancer Diagnosis	After Pancreatic Cancer Diagnosis
Diet Type	Primarily vegetarian, with periods of fruitarianism and veganism.	Continued a strict vegan diet, believing it could heal him.
Specific Foods	Focused on singular foods for weeks, such as apples, carrots, or Odwalla juice.	Still finicky, but later, his wife introduced fish and other proteins to combat weight loss.
Motivation	Minimalism, spiritual cleansing, and a belief in the body's self-healing properties.	A misplaced belief that his diet could cure his cancer, despite doctors' advice for surgery.
Obsessiveness	Consistent, though intermittent, cycles of fasting and food restriction.	Became even more extreme; his wife consulted specialists about his eating disorder.

Jobs's refusal of conventional medical treatment in favor of alternative diets is one of the most controversial aspects of his health journey. During his final years, his health severely declined, leading to severe weight loss and increased difficulty eating. His personal chef, Bryar Brown, would create multiple dishes in the hopes that Jobs would find one palatable.

The Final Years

In his last months, Jobs's ability to eat was greatly diminished. By July 2011, he was consuming almost no solid foods. His intense and erratic eating habits, which began as a spiritual pursuit, had become a source of immense tension and concern for his family. His story stands as a stark reminder of the potential dangers of extreme, self-prescribed diets when faced with serious medical conditions.

Conclusion

What Steve Jobs ate every day was not a simple, consistent meal plan but a reflection of his complex and intense personality. He used his diet as an expression of his philosophy of minimalism and asceticism, cycling through periods of vegetarianism, veganism, and fruitarianism. His unwavering conviction, even in the face of a terminal illness, highlights a fascinating intersection of personal philosophy and extreme eating. While his dietary choices were integral to his public persona, they also underscored his sometimes-difficult and uncompromising nature.

For more on Steve Jobs's life and habits, see Walter Isaacson's comprehensive biography: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Steve-Jobs/Walter-Isaacson/9781982176865

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, Steve Jobs was a vegetarian for most of his life, a dietary choice he made after reading Diet for a Small Planet in college.

During his fruitarian phases, Jobs ate a diet consisting almost exclusively of fruits, nuts, seeds, and grains. He sometimes focused on just one or two items, like apples or carrots, for extended periods.

His diet contributed to weight loss and potentially other nutrient deficiencies. After his pancreatic cancer diagnosis, his continued reliance on this diet, against medical advice, is a controversial topic and was not beneficial for his health.

He fasted for spiritual and mental clarity, believing it heightened his senses and creativity. He would break his fasts with leafy green vegetables.

Laurene Powell Jobs was a vegan when they first married. However, after Steve's pancreatic surgery, she introduced fish and other proteins into the family's meals to try and improve his declining health.

After adopting vegetarianism in college, Jobs mostly avoided meat. However, according to his biography, he would make rare exceptions, such as for unagi sushi.

While there is no definitive link proving his diet caused the cancer, his decision to forgo immediate surgery in favor of extreme dietary and herbal remedies is widely seen as a mistake that contributed to his premature death.