Lowcarbezine!

But What About Bill Clinton?

You may have noticed that Bill Clinton looked darned good last spring when he hit the campaign trail to help his party – he was considerably slimmer than when he left office four years ago. Much was made of the fact that he’d lost the weight on a low carb diet, giving up his Big-Mac-and-fries ways.

Now Clinton has undergone bypass surgery, and some reporters (and, reportedly, Hillary) are suggesting that it was Clinton’s low carb diet that clogged his arteries. While I have no way of knowing for sure, I do know that the buildup of plaque in coronary arteries is a slow and gradual process; I find it very difficult to believe that Bill’s arteries clogged in a year.

I find it sourly amusing that the popular press jumped on Clinton’s low carb diet as the culprit, rather than fifty-odd years of living on junk. Some experts think low carb is not to blame, as well: "It's highly unlikely Clinton's recent diet caused what he's going through now," said Dr. Alice Lichtenstein, chairperson of the American Heart Assn.'s (AHA) nutrition committee and a professor of nutrition at Tufts University. Since the American Heart Association has never had much nice to say about low carb diets, that’s fairly compelling.

It may be that Bill Clinton is in the subset of people who need to weight their low carb diet toward fish, poultry, and olive oil, rather than beef and butter. Or it may just be that his years of fast food caught up with him after he went low carb. I hope he – and you – will take the time to find the version of a low carbohydrate diet that’s right for the individual body concerned, rather than simply abandoning what is clearly a successful way of dealing with a weight problem.

Posted by HoldTheToast at December 3, 2004 02:39 PM