When the average American makes the personal choice to go vegan, it isn’t necessarily media-alerting news. It doesn’t ripple throughout one’s family and social circles, hitting computer screens all over the world. At least, it wasn’t that way for me! But when Bill Clinton went vegan in 2010, the world watched, eating up every fascinating morsel and detail of his transition. Now, three years later, the news that his vegan lifestyle is still going strong is a testament to his world-class example of health, wellness and commitment.
In February of 2010, around the same time that Bill Clinton woke up feeling unusually unwell and was rushed into emergency surgery to insert stents, I was having a routine cholesterol screening. Being thin and relatively fit, I was shocked and dismayed to learn that my numbers were far from stellar. I was 50 years old, had high cholesterol and heart disease runs in my family—my swirling risk factors were whipping up the perfect storm for me to think about give veganism a go, just as news of Bill Clinton’s decision to do the same was all over the news.
After Bill’s stent procedure, Dr. Dean Ornish, the renowned diet and heart disease expert sent him a “blistering” email saying “…fools like you don’t eat like you should.” At this turning point in his life, Bill read and reread three essential books for everyone who finds themselves on the brink of making a dramatic change in their lifestyle:
• Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease
• Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Caldwell Esselstyn, MD
• The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, PhD
The logical question, though, is, why wait until you’re recovering from a quadruple by-pass and stent surgery to take the most obviously preventive measures that virtually promise positive results? Bill Clinton was 30 pounds heavier and on the road to disaster only three years ago. Now he’s the poster president for health and veganism! He says, “I wanted to live to be a grandfather. So I decided to pick the diet that I thought would maximize my chances of long-term survival.”
Even though high cholesterol was my call to action, my transition to veganism was actually a slow process, in the same way that I tiptoe into the cold ocean from the edge of the water at the beach. For my entire life, I have always had a strong empathy for animals and concern for their feelings. But in order to remain omnivorous in this world of meat-eaters, I had experienced countless moments of consciously disconnecting from what I was eating. If you don’t think about what’s really on your plate, you can put it out of your mind, on some level. Intermittent months of eating vegetarian or pescetarian or flexitarian over the course of many years gave me a taste of the herbivore lifestyle but I wasn’t running to take the plunge. Unable to commit, I always fell back into eating meat, fish, dairy and processed foods. Bill made the vegan choice around the same time and it seems that neither of us ever looked back.
Read more about what Bill eats, why, his vision and a great quinoa recipe, go to: http://veganamericanprincess.com/bill-clinton-me-still-voraciously-vegan/#sthash.9xXt0oYP.dpuf
Ellen Francis
Vegan American Princess
www.veganamericanprincess.com
Learning all about living a more vegan lifestyle---food, plant-based nutrition, recipes, restaurants, products, beauty, news, ideas---anything related to veganism!
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