Contining on with CLINTON CHANGES HIS DIET

2-3-14

                                              CLINTON CHANGES HIS DIET

        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 political career, is his usual gregarious charismatic self. But a bland menu? Not even close. As we enter a private room over looking 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 hired quinoa snow pea salad, an assortment of fresh roasted nuts, plates of sliced melon and strawberries and rich, toothsome giant 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. With great relish we start passing plates back and forth. He favored the quinoa; I loved the roasted cauliflower and snow peas; and we both like the peas.

      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 to all that, then maybe there’s hope for the rest of us 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 Cape town South Africa back in July 2010. I have been covering his extraordinary post presidential career since 2005, interviewing him frequently and trailing 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; I’ve stopped eating meat, cheese, milk, even fish. No dairy at all.” I’ve lost more than 20 20 pounds so far, aiming for about 30 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 reknowed diet and heart disease expert.

……“Yeah, it’s normal,” wrote Ornish, an old friend, “because fool likes you don’t eat like you should.” Podded 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 an Reverse Heart Disease, by Caldwell Esselstyne, M>D., and the Chaina Study, by Cornell biochemist T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. (When I suffered a heart attack in late Nov. 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”

    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 life styles 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,’ Toe 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 mad a big difference when I did it.”

      He no longer craves steaks, but bread is a potential pitfall. “Heavily proccessed carbs, you really have to control.

DR. KARL WALLACE D.D.S.