Bill Clinton is a full-fledged vegan
August 19th, 2011When I read the headlines, I thought the reporters probably just didn’t know the meaning of vegan. But it appears that Bill Clinton really is a full on vegan! Check it out in the Boston Herald. He’s vegan for his health, but no doubt swayed in that direction by his daughter Chelsea, also vegan. Way to go, Bill!
The infamous junk food lover, who underwent quadruple bypass surgery in 2004, is now a full-fledged vegan. He consumes no meat, no dairy, no eggs and almost no oil.
“I like the vegetables, the fruits, the beans, the stuff I eat now,” Clinton told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
So what motivated Bubba to change his lifestyle? After he needed another heart operation last year, he realized exercise and cutting calories wasn’t enough to battle his family history of heart disease.
“I essentially concluded that I had played Russian roulette,” Clinton said, “because even though I had changed my diet some and cut down on the caloric total of my ingestion and cut back on much of the cholesterol in the food I was eating, I still — without any scientific basis to support what I did — was taking in a lot of extra cholesterol without knowing it. So that’s when I made a decision to really change.”
Now an advocate for cardiovascular health, Bubba’s Clinton Foundation has joined the American Heart Association to promote exercise and offer better lunches in schools.
August 19th, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Bill is on a “plant-based” diet. I’ve never seen an article that calls him “vegan” which is unfortunate. You know, he wouldn’t want to get sued by the dairy farmers or something crazy. Ugh! Great blog, BTW.
August 20th, 2011 at 8:11 am
Actually, this article did specifically use the word vegan, but now that you mention it, they only refer to his diet, which is 100% plant-based now. But that doesn’t mean he has given up other animal products like leather and wool. More likely that the author misused the word “vegan”.
August 20th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
To Tracy – I’ve seen a number of articles that call him a vegan and I believe I’ve heard him use the word in interviews.