Featured Image Credit: Lionsgate
As the undisputed King of Pop, Michael Jackson has left behind quite the legacy.
That's admittedly something of a questionable one due to the allegations that dogged him during the '90s and '00s, while his death at the age of 50 added another grim twist to his already sensationalized life.
With the star joining the Jackson 5 aged just six, it seems his life was always destined to be put under scrutiny.
Still, with his iconic style and infamous Neverland Ranch amusement park, Michael Jackson grabbed headlines for everything from dangling a baby out of the window to buying the Beatles' song catalog for $47.5 million, being seen in heavy prosthetics or surgical masks, and once apparently going 60 days without sleep.
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You could sit here all day and write about the many out-there things Michael Jackson was known for, but he's recently been back in the news due to Antoine Fuqua's chart-topping biopic.
Michael has been called out for glossing over the allegations made against him, with a clause discovered in a legal settlement requiring mentions to be removed and $50 million being spent on reshoots to overhaul the second act. A sequel is officially on the way, with questions about how it will inevitably have to handle this as it heads into the latter part of Jackson's life.
With Michael making $39.5 million on its opening day and surpassing Oppenheimer for the biggest first day for a biographical film, and earning the highest opening day of any movie in 2026, it's clear there's still plenty of interest in the late musical icon.
The movie only touches on some of his eccentricities, but in the aftermath, there's renewed interest in his somewhat bizarre food requests when flying on a plane. Aphrodite Jones' Michael Jackson Conspiracy was published as an unauthorized biography in 2007, using court transcripts and photo evidence to tell the 'real' story of his life instead of what salacious headlines told you, released two years before his death.
One excerpt includes a "passenger profile" that's dated September 1, 2003, revealing what the "Thriller" singer would tuck into while up in the air. It includes a love for a particular kind of fast food, a penchant for eggs and jelly, and an unusual way he'd disguise alcoholic drinks.
Breakfast included KFC original chicken breasts, mashed potatoes, corn, biscuits, scrambled eggs with strawberry jelly, gravy, and spray butter. If he was feeling a little healthier, he could go for salmon lox, low-fat wheat bagels, low-fat cream cheese, or a fruit plate.
When it comes to lunch, it was even more KFC, with mashed potatoes and gravy on the side, corn on the cob, as well as biscuits with strawberry jelly, and yet more spray butter. Dinner is much the same, and as it's quite a lot of fried food, the log unsurprisingly says he rarely eats dessert. He would occasionally ask for a sundae, one out of every 10 times.
Although specific about wanting Big Red gum, he simply asked for generic white wine, which he'd want disguised by being placed in a Diet Coke.
Remembering he was badly burned during a 1984 Pepsi commercial, it's no surprise he opted for Diet Coke.
There's an interesting caveat that there's to be no chocolate, broccoli, peanut butter, or overly scented foods, as well as the even stranger warning that the crew needs to be prepared to clean 'a lot' after he disembarks.
When his diet was previously shared on Reddit, one person wrote: "Lowfat cream cheese & bagels is crazy work when your whole diet consists of basically KFC."
Another added: "Lots of calories, fat, and protein. There was logic in this diet if this is true. Dude danced his ass off every day, he probably needed the energy. "
A third said: "He knew he only had a few years left on this earth and decided to get real weird with it."
Considering there were no signs of any issues with his heart at the time of death, it seems gobbling buckets of the Colonel's finest didn't do Mr. Jackson much harm.
