The US president is apparently partial to McDonald’s, KFC, pizza and Diet Coke – but he’s not the first world leader with very particular dietary requirements

It may come as little surprise to learn that what goes into Donald Trump’s mouth is roughly as wholesome as what comes out of it. On his campaign plane, the now 71-year-old president ate meals representing “four major food groups”, according to a new book written by two former staffers: “McDonald’s, KFC, pizza and Diet Coke.”

And he didn’t hold back within each group; on the ground at McDonald’s, Trump’s standard order was two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fishes and a chocolate milkshake, his campaign managers Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, added.

Trump may one day count himself lucky that he will never have to rely on the Affordable Care Act, but he would not be the first world leader with peculiar, or even prodigious, dietary requirements.

Bill Clinton

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bill Clinton pauses at the doughnuts in 2007. Photograph: Patrick Collard/AP

The 1990s president was famous for pausing runs with his security guards to dive into McDonald’s. At a New Hampshire campaign event, an aide reportedly had to stop Clinton from devouring a box of a dozen donuts like a starved pelican. A quadruple bypass and two stents later, a ballooning Bill went vegan on doctors’ orders.

Silvio Berlusconi

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Silvio Berlusconi’s tricolore menu posted on Instagram. Photograph: silvioberlusconi2015/Instagram

There is patriotism in Trump’s favoured food brands, but Berlusconi took nationalist eating to new levels with a “tricolore menu”. According to associates, the disgraced former Italian prime minister held lavish banquets at which all food had to be red, green and white. Think three pastas with tomato, basil or cheese sauces, or roast beef with mashed potatoes and salad leaves. He later became a vegetarian, only then to be seen this year reading a menu in McDonald’s.

Margaret Thatcher

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Margaret Thatcher in the kitchen of her flat at 10 Downing Street. Photograph: PA

The Iron Lady had simple tastes in the kitchen, where she insisted on doing her own cooking, often for cabinet colleagues. Eggs featured heavily – usually boiled or poached and laid on Bovril toast – in a high-protein diet before that became a thing. While she campaigned to become prime minister, Maggie reportedly ate 28 eggs per week, occasionally with steak, salad and a drop of whisky.

Winston Churchill

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Churchill: fond of a breakfast cigar. Photograph: PA

Never in the field of political eating was so much served on a plate to one prime minister. Churchill’s diet read like a manifesto for gout: cigars for breakfast; a morning “mouthwash” of whisky and soda; oysters, hams and assorted game. All of it washed down with sherry, cognac, port, brandy and, over a lifetime of vegetable-free excess, an estimated 42,000 bottles of Pol Roger.