If the whole being the King thing wasn’t on the table, King Charles’ stepson Tom Parker Bowles once said the monarch “would be a fantastic food writer.”

To that end—food—the King, as he is known to do, is modernizing what some might call the most important meal of the day: breakfast. Parker Bowles (who is, actually, a food writer and critic himself) writes in his book Cooking & The Crown: Royal Recipes from Queen Victoria to King Charles III that for monarchs of yesteryear, the morning meal was “gut-busting” and sometimes lasted over five courses.

In his most recent book—which came out last October—Parker Bowles wrote about “the aristocratic breakfasts of Victorian and Edwardian times” as meals that “were not so much dainty repasts as full-on gastronomic assaults.” Think “sausages, chicken, and woodcock,” steak, eggs, “and little fishy messes in shells,” per Marie Claire.

But, in many aspects (perhaps most especially sustainability), Charles is keen to move the needle forward and away from Queen Victoria-era practices. His mother, Queen Elizabeth, certainly didn’t have lavish feasts for breakfast, keeping it simple with a routine morning meal of cereal, eggs, toast, and orange juice. Her son Charles took her simple breakfast and made it even more so, according to Parker Bowles.

Charles—who famously has always skipped lunch in favor of working through the midday meal—eats “dried fruit and honey” for breakfast; Parker Bowles’ mother, Queen Camilla, likes “yogurt in summer” and “porridge in winter.” (He even includes Camilla’s porridge recipe in Cooking & The Crown’s pages, writing that she eats it “plain, aside from a little of her own honey.”)

Parker Bowles said the King and Queen’s breaking with royal tradition in this manner represents “a thoroughly modern, and healthy, start to the day,” adding, “I’m not sure Victoria would have approved.”

Parker Bowles went on to call his stepfather—who married his mother in 2005, though had been involved with her romantically for far longer—“a genuine British food hero,” writing, “there is no one better informed on everything from rare breeds and heritage fruit and vegetables to cheesemaking, butchery, and brewing.”