I didn’t until seeing Dr. McDougall’s recent article about him.
“Obama’s Nutritional Knowledge Will Heal America” That was the title of an article that Dr. John McDougall posted on his website last week. After watching the 5-minute video (below) of then-Senator Barack Obama on the campaign trail, I agree that he has the knowledge, but he certainly hasn’t shown any signs of using it since he has been president.
The most powerful couple in the world. If they both just talked everyday for the next 400 days about the power of plant-based nutrition, they could change the world.
Dr. McDougall’s article is terrific and includes some great advice for Mr. Obama when it comes to using his superior nutritional knowledge—to make a huge difference during his all-important second term.
In addition to the video of Senator Obama, his article contains another video of First Lady Michelle Obama on Leno. The primary message in that article is that our president—and his wife—understand more about the power of plant-based nutrition than most people realize—and that they are in an ideal position to do some great things for our health, our cost of health care, world hunger, energy and water shortage and the long-term sustainability of our ecosystem.
Most people are familiar with Michelle’s vegetable garden at the White House and her work to improve school lunch programs, but few us realize that the president himself really does understand the horrible consequences of our toxic western diet. Even though he jokes about having a steak now and then, we know now that he “gets it” regarding our harmful, wasteful, and totally unsustainable diet-style. Now what’s he going to do about it?
The most powerful garden in the world
As Dr. McDougall points out, President Obama has exactly the right knowledge and occupies exactly the right position at exactly the right time to have an incredible opportunity to lead the world toward a global diet-style that will serve to preserve the long-term sustainability of the human race. Most importantly, as a second term president, he doesn’t have to worry about getting elected again.
Unlike any president before him, President Barack Obama has the knowledge and the global platform to do amazing things.
As you’ll see in this 5-minute video filmed at a high school in Florida in August of 2008, Mr. Obama knows his stuff when it comes to plant-based eating—but he wouldn’t have gotten elected if he had talked very much about that delicate topic at the time.
That’s Barack in the middle at about the age when he met Dr. McDougall. That 70-71 UH team inspired him to choose basketball as “his” sport.
Like me, Dr. McDougall has spent some time in Hawaii and was in the company of our future president when he was a very young man. In my case, I attended most of the home games of the 70-71 University of Hawaii basketball team and I know from Mr. Obama’s book that he was also at most of those games.
He was about 10 and I was a 25-year old officer serving at the U.S. Coast Guard Base Honolulu. Unlike Dr. McDougall, I never actually met the young Mr. Obama; from Dr. McDougall’s article:
Barack Obama was introduced to the McDougall Program as a teenager during his years at Punahou High School (1975 to 1979). At the invitation of Brad Yates, the school’s health education teacher, I spoke annually at this top private school in Honolulu, Hawaii. After one of my lectures, a group of four young men sitting in the front row of the auditorium approached me. One of the students was introduced to me as Barry Obama. As a young black man he stood out from the rest of the white and Asian student body. Hopefully, I made a lasting impression on his thinking.
The Bottom Line. I have blogged many times about why a presidential candidate would never be elected with plant-based eating on their platform. And, once elected, they couldn’t win a second term if they even hinted about disrupting our toxic American diet machine.
But now we have Mr. Obama with just the right knowledge at just the right time—and about to begin that all-important second term. But he needs to get real serious with complete clarity—real soon. Maybe he’ll heed Dr. McDougall’s advice and delight us all with his actions.
It’s time for Mr. Obama to come to the “surface” and share his powerful nutritional knowledge with the world.
For your convenience, I have provided links to Dr. McDougall’s article along with links to a half-dozen of my own related blogs. The last three blogs are the oldest and feature some good things that Michelle has done—along with where she is missing the boat big time. —My 668th consecutive daily blog—
- Source document. Obama’s nutritional knowledge will heal America. Dr. McDougall
- Congratulations Mr. President. Now you have time to fix ObamaCare!
- Obama will need a lot of help to fix our cost of health care.
- To-do list for our president’s second term in office
- Michelle, it’s time to tell the world about dairy
- Federal guidelines & Michelle Obama—not getting it done
- Michelle Obama…coming up short on healthy eating
The following six books can be purchased on Amazon for a grand total of less than $60—and will enable you to understand the overwhelming challenges we face—along with the single most-powerful solution of all.
Six-Pack from Hicks—for health, hope & harmony on planet Earth
- 4Leaf Guide to Vibrant Health, powerful new book by Kerry Graff, MD and yours truly
- Healthy Eating, Healthy World, The “big picture” about food (my first book)
- An essential scientific resource: The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell; the primary book that influenced Bill Clinton to adopt a whole food, plant-based diet.
- Primary cause of cancer is not bad luck. Stop Feeding Your Cancer, by John Kelly, MD
- A horrifying wake-up call for leaders. TEN BILLION by Dr. Stephen Emmott
- Food choices are the primary cause of our environmental problems, yet our world leaders, scientists & experts are Comfortably Unaware, by Richard Oppenlander.
Why should we be eating mostly plants? The “big picture” in 4 minutes.
Want to find out how healthy you are eating? Take our free 4Leaf Survey. It takes about two minutes. eCornell is now using our survey in their plant-based nutrition course.
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J.
I am wondering if it is worse to be ignorant of the concepts and do nothing (as past presidents have done) or to be knowledgeable and do nothing (as President Obama is doing)?
I think if he was to do one thing it should be to lead by example like the first lady is doing. This would create a huge amount of discussion and a great many people who wish to emmulate him. Look what the Kennedy’s did for fashion. I am not a big believer in legistlating health like NY is trying to do. I think that if you do not get people to make their own choice then they will not change long term. Look to prohibition as a model of the failure of legistlating change.
Bill
Jim, nice post as always, optimistic, concise and meaningful. As you and everyone knows, it’s always taken pressure to get some movement from the White House. I’m starting to think the ONLY issue that is strong enough to make people make a change in the way resources are managed (e.g., water, grain, etc.) and as an offshoot of that — diet, is the issue of climate change.
I think you likely caught this, but the World Bank has issued its verdict on climate change, and it’s that a 4-degree world means absolute tragedy. I like that this vegan post has a link to both the excellent Chris Hedges piece on the report and has a link to the actual World Bank report itself:
http://veganismisnonviolence.com/2012/11/27/chris-hedges-stand-still-for-the-apocalypse/
All people need to leverage this single global issue as a means to bring about change on a vast number of fronts, including diet. What do you think?
So why did he appoint Michael R. Taylor, former Monsanto as the head of the FDA? Can we please replace him with J. Morris Hicks?
And what do you think President Obama will do? Nothing! He is part of the system and therefore has to play the game according to the rules set by big business.
He does like a good steak probably more than occasionally.
Exactly, he us just a puppet like the rest of the presidents in the US/world for the banksters or big buisness
While I agree that President Obama is a unique position to speak out, as soon as he does, the Rush Limbaugh’s of the world will accuse him of turning the US into a nanny state and that Obama just wants to close down McDonald’s and Pepsi (or Coca-Cola). The noise from Big Food would be deafening. If we thought the ads from the last presidential campaign were bad, just wait until someone of Obama’s stature tries to tell us that our optimum diet is whole plant foods, not Arby’s or the Colonel’s original recipe.
I agree with you, Mike, but when will someone come forward, sacrifice ego, reputation, and risk to face the onslaught from Big Food for the sake of future generations? We’re getting close to the tipping point. Enough game playing. I would love to see Obama take a risk and name the elephant in the room. We’re all dancing around it. It’s only going to get bigger!