by Joe Conason, AARP The Magazine, August/September 2013
The 42nd president of the United States explains how we can — and for our health must — learn to love eating vegetables, too
When Bill Clinton invited me to lunch in May, I knew better than to expect fried catfish or barbecued ribs. The former president is now a devoted vegan, meaning no meat, fish or dairy products, and he has pursued a healthier way of life for more than three years. While I figured our lunch menu might be bland, that would be a small price to pay for private time with a world leader who is anything but.
As it happens, the fit, trim and sharply attired Clinton, whom I’ve come to know well during more than two decades covering his career, is his usual gregarious, charismatic self. But a bland menu? Not even close.
As we enter a private room overlooking Manhattan’s busy Rockefeller Center, I’m struck with a dazzling kaleidoscope of a dozen delicious dishes: including roasted cauliflower and cherry tomatoes, spiced and herbed quinoa with green onions, shredded red beets in vinaigrette, garlicky hummus with raw vegetable batons, Asian-inspired snow pea salad, an assortment of fresh roasted nuts, plates of sliced melon and strawberries, and rich, toothsome gigante beans tossed with onions in extra-virgin olive oil.
The luncheon banquet gives a whole new meaning to the dreaded cliché “Eat your vegetables.” And this is exactly what Clinton, who is taking on America’s obesity epidemic with the same passionate commitment he brought to the presidency, wants.
As I gawk, he smiles. “This looks pretty good, doesn’t it?” Clinton asks. It looks better than good. We sit down and with great relish start passing plates back and forth. He favored the quinoa; I loved the roasted cauliflower and snow peas; and we both liked the beans.
The road to a healthier diet
At age 66, Bill Clinton still travels and works at a pace that completely exhausts staffers who are two or three decades younger. Yet, while coping with heart disease and the usual complaints of aging, he has managed to change his diet drastically, lose more than 30 pounds and keep the weight off. If he can do all that, then maybe there’s hope for the rest of us baby boomers — and Americans of all ages — whose eating and exercise habits (and medical expenses) worry him a lot.
I first noticed a change in Clinton’s eating habits when we were in Capetown, South Africa, back in July 2010. (I have been covering his extraordinary postpresidential career since 2005, interviewing him frequently and traveling with him across Africa, Europe and the Mideast, as well as the United States.) We were all preparing to dig into a tempting dinner sent up to the former president’s suite from a very fine restaurant in the hotel. Sitting down next to him, I glanced at his plate and saw none of the steak, shrimp, fish or chicken on the buffet — just a tangle of green lo mein noodles and a pile of broccoli.
“Is that all you’re eating?” I blurted.
“That’s right,” he replied. “I’ve stopped eating meat, cheese, milk, even fish. No dairy at all.” He smiled and yanked on his waistband. “I’ve lost more than 20 pounds so far, aiming for about 30 before Chelsea’s wedding. And I have so much more energy now! I feel great.” (He achieved his ideal weight in time for his daughter’s marriage to Marc Mezvinsky on July 31, 2010.)
Clinton traces his decision to change back to the morning in February 2010 when he woke up looking pale and feeling tired. His cardiologist quickly brought him into New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery to insert a pair of stents. One of his veins had given out, a frequent complication following the quadruple-bypass surgery he had undergone in 2004.
At a subsequent press conference, Clinton recalls, his doctors tried “to reassure the public that I wasn’t on the verge of death, and so they said, you know, this is actually fairly normal.” Soon after, he received a “blistering” email from Dean Ornish, M.D., the renowned diet and heart disease expert.
“Yeah, it’s normal,” wrote Ornish, an old friend, “because fools like you don’t eat like you should.”
Prodded into action, Clinton started by rereading Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease, which urges a strict, low-fat, plant-based regimen, along with two books that were, if possible, even more militantly vegan: Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, by Caldwell Esselstyn, M.D., and The China Study, by Cornell biochemist T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. (When I suffered a heart attack in late November 2010, Clinton sent me all three books.)
“I just decided that I was the high-risk person, and I didn’t want to fool with this anymore. And I wanted to live to be a grandfather,” says Clinton. “So I decided to pick the diet that I thought would maximize my chances of long-term survival.”
Pass the quinoa
As we talk, Clinton is clearly enjoying every virtuous bite, helping himself to seconds of both the quinoa and the beans. He still has a hearty appetite, but what he loves to eat now is obviously good for him.
It’s a testament to his discipline that he pulled off a 180-degree pivot overnight — motivated not only by his own urge to live but by the goals he has set for his foundation. Worried by the increasing prevalence of diet-related disease among Americans of all ages, he and the Clinton Foundation are committed to promoting healthier lifestyles, with what he sees as far-reaching effects on the nation’s finances, quality of life and even climate change, which is exacerbated by meat production. “I wanted to do it because this health and wellness work I’ve been doing is increasingly important to me,” he says.
To most Americans of Clinton’s generation — especially those, like him, who grew up in places like Arkansas, where barbecued pork and cornmeal-crusted catfish dominate the local cuisine — cutting out meat, fish and dairy would seem a radical deprivation. But Clinton quickly adapted. “The main thing that was hard for me actually — much harder than giving up meat, turkey, chicken and fish — was giving up yogurt and hard cheese,” he says. “I love that stuff, but it really made a big difference when I did it.”
He no longer craves steaks, but bread is a potential pitfall. “Heavily processed carbs, you really have to control that,” he says. When Caldwell Esselstyn spotted a picture of him on the Internet, eating a dinner roll at a banquet, the renowned doctor dispatched a sharply worded email message: “I’ll remind you one more time, I’ve treated a lot of vegans for heart disease.”
Clinton’s daily menu
These days at the Clinton residence in suburban Chappaqua, New York, house manager Oscar Flores prepares simple meals for Clinton and Hillary, who vowed to start eating healthier after she stopped globe-trotting as President Obama’s secretary of state.
For Bill Clinton, breakfast is almost always an almond-milk smoothie, blended with fresh berries, nondairy protein powder and a chunk of ice. Lunch is usually some combo of green salad and beans. He snacks on nuts — “those are good fats” — or hummus with raw vegetables, while dinner often includes quinoa, the Incan super-grain, or sometimes a veggie burger.
The former president has a tip for those who crave starchy food: “You can make whipped cauliflower as a substitute for mashed potatoes, and it’s great.” Once a week or so, he will have a helping of organic salmon or an omelet made with omega-3-fortified eggs, to maintain iron, zinc and muscle mass.
In addition to his dietary changes, Clinton also walks two or three miles a day, outdoors whenever possible; plus, he works out with weights and uses an exercise ball for balance drills. And, of course, he continues to play golf, always walking the course without a cart.
Wherever he goes, Clinton finds signs that vegetarian and vegan alternatives are winning wider acceptance. During a recent visit to South America, the Peruvian president and his wife invited Clinton to dinner. “They made a whole vegan meal for me, and they ate it too.” They’d obviously done their homework: The centerpiece, Clinton recalls, was this “unbelievable quinoa dish.”
As we finish our hearty lunch, the new Role Model in Chief takes a helping of fruit for dessert. And he offers some final, practical advice to America’s struggling yo-yo dieters: For anyone who wants to change, he says, “I would keep a record of everything I ate every day — what, when and how much. That’s easy for everybody to do. Just go write it down. And then I’d start looking at it and say, what am I going to give up and what am I going to substitute?”
If you don’t have the willpower to do it for yourself, he adds, do it for your loved ones. “A lot of people who are busy and stressed feel that eating and being comfortable is their reward,” he says. But particularly for those who, like him, have children, he says “you have a responsibility to try to be as healthy as possible.”
Sounding the themes that still drive him every day, Clinton wraps up our meeting with a message, reminding me that “the way we consume food and what we consume” are driving the unsustainable level of health care spending in America. To truly change the conditions that lead to bad habits and poor health, he warns, “we have to demand it by changing the way we live. You have to make a conscious decision to change for your own well-being, and that of your family and your country.”
Joe Conason is a freelance journalist who writes about politics.
source: AARP
I am surprised that you would continue to include some very unsavory figures on your web page as examples of leadership. Are you that out of touch or have you joined lamestream media? I am beginning to lose interest in your posts but will give you a little more time. From Infowars.com.War Criminal Bill Clinton Among Nobel Peace Prize Nominees. Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 27, 2012 Two excerpts.
” In 1999, Bill Clinton was one of the world’s leading war criminals. He had surpassed the crimes of his predecessor and “brought to the commission of war crimes a new eclectic reach and postmodern style,” Edward S. Herman wrote at the time. ” “In Yugoslavia, Clinton targeted civilian infrastructure and civilian facilities – houses, hospitals, schools, trains, factories, power stations, and broadcasting facilities. Noted journalist John Pilger added “housing estates, hotels, libraries, youth centers, theaters, museums, churches and 14th century monasteries on the World Heritage list” to Clinton’s target roster. According to Yugoslav authorities, 60 percent of NATO targets were civilian, including 33 hospitals and 344 schools, as well as 144 major industrial plants and a large petro-chemical plant whose bombing caused a pollution catastrophe.
Not long after Clinton ran out of targets, the BBC reported that the use of depleted uranium in Serbia would cause 10,000 extra deaths from cancer. Scientists at Kozani in northern Greece reported that radiation levels were 25% above normal whenever the wind blew from the direction of Kosovo while Bulgarian researchers reported finding levels eight times higher than usual within Bulgaria itself, and up to 30 times higher in Yugoslavia.
Please…do not use these demons as examples of anything they are trying to kill the Hare Krsna movement.
Hasti Gopala Dasa
This means your authority is infowars.com, an anti-Semitic neonazi website, whereas we prefer to follow Prabhupada’s example who had to deal with president Nixon and president Johnson (Vietnam war era, 58,168 U.S. troops died in Vietnam). Basically there is no difference between Bill Clinton, Nixon or Johnson. In 1972 Prabhupada wrote this letter:
Letter to President of United States
Los Angeles
28 June, 1972
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20025
My dear Mr. President:
Several thousand years ago a great pious emperor ruled over this planet. He was a descendant of the great Kuru dynasty and the grandson of Arjuna, the hero of the Bhagavad-gita and the personal associate of the Lord, Sri Krishna.
[…]
No mention of what you are proposing above. Instead, Prabhupada is asking the president for an interview to discuss the possibilities of Prabhupada providing further service in US.
In sum, Prabhupada surely would have appreciated a president turning vegan.
Yep, Alex Jones of INFO wars has been heavily promoting gun owners to keep their animal hunting rights. He is a fine authority, since he wants everyone to have a nice hunting gun, which is of course what kills dozens of people every day in the USA. We have out of control gun shootings here in the Bay area every day — that kills toddlers, babies, pregnant women, old people, etc. Alex says — We need more of these guns? Never mind Alex Jones animal hunter’s society also uses the same guns to hunt squirrels, rabbits, deer, birds and so on.
Alex Jones is also part of the same people who think the end is near, so you’d better have lots of ammunition to shoot the hungry folks who will be busting down your door. All you have to do is google “Alex Jones and guns” to see all kinds of his nut-bag interviews he has done.
He is a very abusive, frightened, paranoid man, ok like some of these GBC gurus are. I am simply amazed that he is considered as an authority — on anything. Alex Jones is not even a vegetarian. Devotees should not listen to these paranoid, deeply disturbed, psycho gun nuts, and beef eating people — at all, they have nothing to give us but fear and illusion, that’s my opinion at least.
Srila Prabhupada said we have to be respectful to the government leaders in whatever country we live in, or else we will not be able to operate in those countries if they see us as a threat to their authority. He was respectful to these leaders himself, we need to follow his idea. ys pd
June 17 1972 was the date of the Watergate burglary and was covered up until August 9, 1974. So Srila Prabhupada was not formally aware of the scandal at the time of his letter. Your assumptions are emotional and incorrect about the source of truth regarding Bill Clinton. You have no evidence of anti semitism or neo nazi activities at Infowars. If you do then contact them with it and reveal your sources. We prefer the truth about who we deal with regarding credibility regardless of the source. Truth is truth, If you’d like to sit down with a mass murderer such as Bill Clinton and get some of his vibes and hand to hand karma be my guest. Just because Srila Prabhupada wrote a letter to Nixon has no bering on this situation. You are assuming that Srila Prabhupada would be impressed with a killer like Clinton becoming vegan. Based on your approval and assumptions then Prabhupadanugas should investigate all the world leaders of ill repute and glorify them as stand up guys because they eat something like we do. Regardless of their on going tyrannical exploits. So if Prabhupadanugas believes as you do that there is no difference between Nixon and Clinton then you agree that Clinton is as bad a mass murderer as Nixon and that means that it is ok to represent Clinton on a Hare Krsna web site? Go ahead and expand your approval but remember you will be including a non devotee, mass murderer, convicted sex offender and atheist as a regular on a what used to be a web site that represented Srila Prabhupada. That is why it is called Prabhupadanugas. Do you approve of Clinton being represented on Prabhupadanugas just because he is a vegan now? Would you approve of articles that revealed good points about Adolf Hitler and his vegan diet? Maybe you would. So lets post a little here for you: source: http://news.msn.com/world/hitlers-last-surviving-food-tester-talks Excerpt: According to The Telegraph:
“Of course I was afraid. If it had been poisoned, I would not be here today. We were forced to eat it, we had no choice.”
Hitler’s vegetarianism is well-known, and while he occasionally enjoyed a sausage or stuffed pigeon, he believed a meat-free diet was a key to Aryan purity. So his taste testers were also vegetarian by default.
Woelk says, “It was all vegetarian, the most delicious fresh things, from asparagus to peppers and peas, served with rice and salads. It was all arranged on one plate, just as it was served to him. There was no meat, and I do not remember any fish.”
In fact, the Hitler Youth promoted soya beans in a manual and called them “Nazi beans,” as an alternative to meat. Hitler told Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich’s minister of propaganda, he intended to convert Germany to vegetarianism after he won the war.
But although he referred to meat broth as “corpse tea,” he was not fastidious about declining meat, the Telegraph reports.
This action is like picking out a thorn with a thorn, though both are the same. Hasti Gopala, we all are sitting in the same boat of complicity!
Swami Prabhupada: “Actually, everyone is butcher. Actually, so-called gentlemen who are, I mean to say, supporting these butchers, they are also butchers. According to Manu-samhita…”
Did Hasti Gopala attempt to bring Bill Clinton to justice? Rather he’s peacefully sitting in front his satellite tv and paying tax for Bill Clinton’s retirement pension.
One thorn, which causes pinpricks on the leg of the Lord, is certainly disturbing to the Lord, and the other thorn, which takes out the disturbing elements, certainly gives service to the Lord. We are all thorns. If Bill Clinton became vegetarian why not engage him to have others also become more conscious about eating?
Hmm, didn’t know that Bill Clinton advertising vegetarian diet is creating such a huge chorus of outrage among prabhupadanugas? If more readers are of same understanding like Hasti Gopala pr this post should be removed!
Prabhupadanugas often see a forum as private function. However what you don’t know, 99,9% visitors of prabhpadanugas.eu are people who stumble in via search engine. They hardly understand anything of ritvik vs false gurus. But who is considering this?
These conspiracy theorists are in illusion. Their so-called conspirators are simply dancing dogs in the hands of maya (the illusory energy of Lord Sri Krishna). They have no real power to change anything. They are constantly being frustrated by the stringent laws of material nature. The only real conspiracies are being carried out behind the scenes by the demigods under Krishna’s direction, but the silly conspiracy theorists know nothing of this.
In 1998, Bhusaya Prabhu, the Bhaktivedanta Cultural Center Director at ISKCON Detroit, told me face-to-face that when he met with then President Clinton and shook his hand, he was really, really impressed with the amazing charisma that the President emanated.
Bill Clinton is still a very influential personality. Pointing out that he has become a vegan is good preaching, pure and simple.
Prabhupada:
Alex Jones, the INFO wars fellow, is promoting things like animal hunting and beef eating, so its simply baffling to me as to why any devotee would even cite this man and his site as their authority, or even go to his site for their inspiration. Alex Jones is just making money by making others paranoid, fearful and illusioned, so he is not going to a happy place at the time of death. He does even not know what the problem of life is, namely forgetting Krishna, never mind he has no solution either. He is a perfect example of a waste of human existence. ys pd
He recently took a Bhagavad Gita while in LA & held it up for the crowd to see. How cool is that?
http://youtu.be/JHIyE_vnY4A
What other leaders have done anything which even comes close to this? Give the guy a break! We’ve all had a dark past. Alex Jones has gone off on the deep end with all this fear mongering crap…
It is very good to give him a Bhagavada Gita you have done well, your heart and mind are in the right place, Remember, those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it. Clinton is internationally known as a war criminal and mass murderer. Learn your history and understand the true character of those you may be dealing with in high places. He is not a great man nor a leader of real men. He is a notorious figure and an ordinary soul, otherwise by now he would have read the Gita if he knows what it is. Well done, very creative and generous of you to include a most unfortunate soul as him in the mercy of Srila Prabhupada and yourself.
Puranjana das says:
10. August 2013 at 6:05 pm
Alex Jones, the INFO wars fellow, is promoting things like animal hunting and beef eating, so its simply baffling to me as to why any devotee would even cite this man and his site as their authority, or even go to his site for their inspiration. Alex Jones is just making money by making others paranoid, fearful and illusioned, so he is not going to a happy place at the time of death. He does even not know what the problem of life is, namely forgetting Krishna, never mind he has no solution either. He is a perfect example of a waste of human existence. ys pd
Puranjan Prabhu. Condemn Alex while indirectly supporting Clinton? That’s weird bro. Anywhere you go on earth you are indirectly supporting animal slaughter and hunting buddy. The information I sited about Clinton is from International sources. I just used Infowars because of their most impeccable source searching. My comment was not about Alex but about Clinton’s history. So leave Alex out and see the other sources below: http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-kissinger-bill-clinton-another-israeli-war-criminal-of-the-year-award/5340012 and http://americandefenseleague.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/apologizing-for-president-bill-clintons-serbia-war-crimes/ Hasti Gopala Dasa
Thanks Hasti Gopala prabhu, right, in one sense we are all war criminals, human rights abusers and accomplice since it is us who vote these leaders. You elect somebody by your vote, again condemn? Hayagriva Das (The Hare Krishna Explosion, excerpt):
Same here, every president of the United States is elected by popular vote. Nobody can complain of being send to war.