The blue-eyed Farouk was thin early in his reign, but later gained an enormous amount of weight. His taste for fine cuisine made him dangerously obese, weighing nearly 300 pounds —an acquaintance described him as "a stomach with a head". He died in the Ile de France restaurant in Rome, Italy on 18 March 1965. He collapsed and died at his dinner table following a characteristically heavy meal. While some claim he was poisoned by Egyptian Intelligence, no official autopsy was conducted on his body.