Wait, What? When Did Bill Clinton Become A Vegan?

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by Mark Joyella | 9:05 am, August 19th, 2011

» 26 comments

Noted burger and donut lover Bill Clinton has–brace yourself–become a vegan. Is nothing sacred? In an interview with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, the former president and junk-food lover has cleaned up his act, dropping twenty pounds and transforming his diet. Gupta reports Clinton “now considers himself a vegan…and he says he’s healthier than ever.” The candidate who worked his way through New Hampshire–and boxes of donuts–had a huge health scare that resulted in heart surgery and advice to step away from the barbeque and french fries.

“I was lucky I did not die of a heart attack,” Clinton told Gupta about his quadruple bypass. “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.”

The former president, whose interview features in a CNN special The Last Heart Attack Sunday night at 8 p.m., now says he consumes no meat, no dairy, no eggs, almost no oil.

Watch it here, from CNN:

As we fondly remember the power-eating Big Bill of old, enjoy this classic 1990s clip from Saturday Night Live with Phil Hartman:

Bill Clinton, CNN, Diet, heart attack, Phil Hartman, Sanjay Gupta, SNL, Vegan

Anonymous

He has done a good job on his weight!
Anonymous

He has done a good job on his weight!
Anonymous

He has done a good job on his weight!
http://twitter.com/lazzzlo lazzzlo

Good for him.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Dronetek-Bulk-Vanderhuge/100000918732763 Dronetek Bulk Vanderhuge

LOL! A left wing Democrat being promoted for his liberal religious beliefs on a democrat party propaganda site.
Anonymous

Wonder if he still eats pu**y?
i420

Thats your ardent political ignorance preventing you from seeing the point of the CNN special.
Anonymous

He’s not a “straight” Republican, so you know he doesn’t eat cock.
Anonymous

Chris Christie has at least 200 pounds on Bubba.
Anonymous

Chris Christie has at least 200 pounds on Bubba.
Mia

I thought he changed his diet when his daughter entered into that sham of a marriage.
Anonymous

Now Ronnie Reagan became a vegan by the late 80s.

No, wait… Ronnie became a vegetable by the late 80s.
TruDat

Man you’re a fool.
Anonymous

He looks like hell.
Anonymous

Gay comes up in your posts an awful lot. Seems to be on your mind constantly. Sorta suspicious. Just saying.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Sandra-Hesketh-Howerton/1617920024 Sandra Hesketh Howerton

Good for Bill! And good for the animals.
Moderation ? Really ?

I’m sure Bill ate his fair share while at Oxford , he just never swallowed .
http://societyfordaintydamsels.wordpress.com Fennel

Sick and tired everything being politicized. Its not conservative, liberal, moderate, right, left wing. Its his choice of food based on his health needs and preferences. Plain and simple. BTW I too was really surprised former president Bill Clinton is now vegan but that’s his choice. I just hope he knows that good non meat sources for B12 is kelp and spirulina.
Anonymous

He is in good company, Adolph Hitler was aslo a vegan.
NomoBeeHO

Is this Carville’s week or Begala’s to suck-off Slick?
Dfsf45

Stupid. You go from
one extreme to another. For nearly all
people, there is no need to be a vegan or vegetarian to be healthy. I can really only see three reasons to be a vegan. Two are legitimate and one is nutty. Religious reasons and real medically verified
health reasons (i.e. you have some rare medical condition that doesn’t allow
you to eat meat or dairy products) are legitimate. And when I say religious, I mean like an
eastern religion and not some silly animal rights religion. The third reason, which I consider silly and
not legitimate, is because you personally think it is wrong to eat animals.

I’d bet that Clinton is only doing this to try to get young
women into bed.

I’ve lost 40 lbs and never specifically cut out meat or
dairy products.
Dfdf45454

Being a vegan is pretty much a left-wing thing to do. Usually it is based on some nutty beliefs about animal suffering or it being imoral to eat animals. I am sure there are some non left-wingers who become vegan because they get sucked into all the lies about meat and dairy being bad for your health and because it is trendy. But I’d bet the vast majority of vegans are left-wingers. And I am 99% sure that health reasons are not requiring Clinton to be a vegan.
guest

Do me a favor, next time you see a vicious dog fight, get between them and make sure neither gets hurt. In fact, why don’t you go to africa and stop lions and tigers from attacking and eating other animals. That would be good for everybody. Those pesky animals just don’t realize that they are supposed to be vegetarians.
guest

Another liberal who full of love for diversity and opposing viewpoints and compassion for all of mankind especially the weakest among us….
guest

Yeah, five or so republicans out of about 100 million in the USA have been found to be closet gays so they
all are, right? Your logic is unassailable. And your broad sweeping generalizations very well
thought out. You remember McGreevey,
right? I guess all democrats are gay
too.
Why should it surprise you that a gay republican politician wants to keep it a secret? That would be a significant if not insurmountable obstacle for a republican running for office in most places. And some might not even actually be republicans but they pretend to be because they live in areas dominated by republicans and that is the only way they can get elected.

The one thing I can’t understand is that liberals think it
is totally okay to be gay and that it is nobody’s business, but then they go
around trying to insult republicans by calling them gay. Which is it?
Is being gay bad or not? Is it none of anybody’s business or not? And don’t give me that BS about republicans wanting to be in everybody’s bedroom. A few make a big issue out of people being gay, but the vast majority would rather not know what happens in peoples’ bedrooms.
guest

Every human being has about 100 IQ points on you.