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Bill Clinton’s memoir tells the story of a man that has struggled with his weight the majority of his life. He had a soft spot for fatty foods and watched the scale continue to rise as a result. He loved his barbecue, cheeseburgers, and cinnamon sweet rolls. But in the past decade he’s undergone two heart procedures. Since then the former president has changed his tune by unexpectedly going vegan.
Here’s what he said in an interview with Sanjay Gupta on CNN, seen on the New York Times:
“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 if my body would produce enough of the enzyme to support it, and clearly it didn’t or I wouldn’t have had that blockage. So that’s when I made a decision to really change.”
As a result President Clinton gave up dairy, eggs, meat, and ate very little oil. In the process he’s lost 20 pounds and says he’s never felt better.
“I like the vegetables, the fruits, the beans, the stuff I eat now,” Clinton told Gupta.
This is more than just a president giving up meat. It’s proof positive that in a nation where heart disease and other obesity-related diseases mean early death, veganism isn’t just a humane, environmentally responsible way to eat, it’s a mainstream way to avoid diseases associated with obesity. Dairy, eggs, and meat are loaded with saturated fats, cholesterol, and excessive calories which undermine our health the more we age.
Today, thanks to celebrity converts and more restaurant and food choices, veganism has made its way to the mainstream. A 2009 survey by Vegetarian Resource Group reported about 1 percent of Americans are vegan, roughly a third of the people who reported being vegetarians.
Bill Clinton's veganism could serve to open the eyes of many who would have shunned the diet before.
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