Princess Anne has earned herself a few titles over the years, one being the hardest working royal and another, the most down-to-earth royal, so it was perhaps no surprise to find out she was teetotal and enjoyed a limited diet of basic foods.
The 75-year-old attended a whopping 478 royal engagements last year, increasing her workload from previous years. Her work ethic and habits are something she seemingly inherited from her late mother, Queen Elizabeth II and her late father, Prince Phillip.
Anne was the former monarch's middle child, alongside Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, while King Charles was the eldest and Prince Edward was the youngest of the four royal children.
She shares a trait with her disgraced brother, the former prince Andrew, 66, in that both are teetotal, a tendency believed to have resulted from their late parents' "self-restraint".
"Again, though, both of them exercised a steely self-restraint. It was something which they passed on to all of their children, all of whom eat sparingly, while the middle two are also teetotal," British journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker, Robert Hardman, penned in his new book, Elizabeth II: In Private. In Public. The Inside Story.
He was referring to the late Queen and her husband's remarkable abilities to control their emotions and impulses, a trait he noticed was passed down to their children.
© Getty Images for Ascot RacecoursPrincess Anne's sobriety
The mother-of-two spends most of her time at royal engagements and various charity events, but she won't be caught with a glass of expensive Champagne in her hand while out and about.
Her former private secretary, Captain Sir Nicholas Wright RN, revealed Anne doesn't drink alcohol during an interview for ITV's documentary, Anne: The Princess Royal at 70, and said: "I'm very jealous, the princess doesn’t drink [alcohol] at all."
Anne's younger brother, Andrew, has also publicly revealed he avoids drinking and told the Mirror during a visit to New Zealand in 2005 that he had been teetotal since he was a teenager after he "poisoned" his taste buds with alcohol. He also told the Evening Standard that he didn't drink because he "hasn’t got the head for it".
© Tim Graham/Getty ImagesUnusual eating habits
Despite having an array of private chefs on hand to whip up whatever she fancied, Anne has always kept it painfully simple when it comes to choosing what to eat and when to eat it.
Forget gorging on lavish afternoon teas and gluttonous state dinners, for Zara Tindall and Peter Phillips' mum, it is all about tinned foods and brown bananas.
It has been widely reported that Anne prefers to snack on tinned pies, smoked fish and blackened bananas and a bowl of fruit for breakfast. Former royal chef Darren McGrady previously told TODAY: "[Princess Anne] almost always preferred the bananas almost black - overripe - because they digest easier."
According to the MailOnline, Anne has never been one for decadence or indulgence when it comes to mealtimes and has even been known to serve her dinner guests pork pies or "anything by Fray Bentos," a supermarket brand of tinned meat.
