Bono Explains Why He Lived Off Instant Potatoes & Canned Food as a Teen

As the lead singer and founding member of the Irish rock band U2, humanitarian and well-known activist, Bono leads a pretty charmed life. With an estimated net worth of $700 million and real estate in Ireland, France, New York, and Los Angeles, Paul David Hewson lives a much different life now than the one he had as a kid.

Bono recently chatted with Ruthie Rogers, co-founder and chef of the iconic London restaurant, The River Cafe, about how much different his life was growing up. He revealed that food was just fuel after his mom died when he was 14, and it took years before that attitude began to change.

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Bono’s Feelings Towards Food Changed When His Mom Died

Bono’s mother, Iris, died from a brain aneurysm when he was just 14. This left his father, Brendan, to raise him while his 22-year-old brother, Norman, also still lived at home. A lot changed with his mother gone, including the availability of healthy meals.

“I just saw it as fuel, something to get done,” Bono said on the “Ruthie’s Table 4” podcast about eating. “I took no pleasure in it.” Then, he read to her from his book, “Surrender.”

“After Iris died, 10 Seedwood Road stopped being a home,” he read. “It’s just a house. Most days, I’d return to it from Mount Temple holding a tin of meat, a tin of beans, and a packet of Cadbury’s Smash. Cadbury’s Smash was astronaut food, but eating it did not make me feel like David Bowie’s ‘Starman’ or Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man.'”

“In fact, eating it was not a lot like eating at all, but at least it was easy,” he continued. “You just put boiling water on these little dry pellets, and they shape-shifted into mashed potato.”

He would then mix the tinned meat and beans with the potato, and voilà! Dinner was ready. Eventually, Norman began bringing home leftover airplane food from the airline where he worked, which improved the meals he ate. However, “after six months, the aftertaste of tin was all we could remember,” Bono said.

Bono Recalls a Time That He Ate the Dog’s Dinner

While Bono professed that he’s not a fan of cooking, after he married Alison ‘Ali’ Stewart, he admitted that he would try to cook for her. But he found it difficult because she was a vegetarian. Then, one day, he came home to the smell of meat cooking.

Photo by VANINA LUCCHESI / AFP) (Photo by VANINA LUCCHESI/AFP via Getty Images

“‘Oh my god, she’s cooking beef for me and she’s vegetarian, this is amazing,'” he remembered thinking. “And I walked in and said, ‘What are you cooking?’ She said, ‘That’s not for us, that’s the dog’s dinner, there’s a few bones I actually picked up from the butcher’s.'”

“And I ate it. I ate the dog’s dinner once. That’s who I am,” he said, chuckling.