Is Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris Plant-Based? Here are Her Healthy Habits
Recently, polls showed that roughly three-quarters of vegans planned to vote for Joe Biden. With the election behind us, we’d like to turn our attention for a moment to Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris’ enviable healthy eating habits. Below, we reveal five of her best rituals for eating a mostly-plant-based diet that have our seal of approval here at The Beet, where we’re all about “good vegetables” and good times.
1. She loves to eat what she calls “good vegetables”
Now that’s a phrase we’d like to use to our spud-loving partner 500 times a day. “I believe in eating well. It's not fanatical. Eat good food. Make sure you've got good vegetables,” Harris said in a 2015 interview in collaboration between Elle + Lenny Letter.
2. She wants everyone to eat less red meat for the planet
In 2019, on a CNN town hall on climate change, Harris expressed her views on the American food system needing an overhaul. In discussing the U.S. food pyramid, Harris shared her desire to update it to make it healthier. When asked specifically about reducing red meat, Harris said she was all for that, as Newsweek reported.
"To be very honest with you, I love cheeseburgers from time to time, I just do," Harris admitted. Indeed, it’s unrealistic (at this point!) to expect everyone to go cold turkey on animal products, but collectively reducing our meat intake, whether through initiatives like Meatless Mondays or plant-based meat alternatives, will make a big difference for people’s health and the environment alike.
3. She has an herb garden and encourages everyone to grow their own herbs
It’s easier than you think, and that sad dinner salad is always exponentially boosted with a sprinkling of fresh mint, or basil, or parsley, or…
“I have a little herb garden. I'm all about herbs. I'll bring them to the office and share them with people,” Harris shared in the aforementioned interview with Elle + Lenny Letter. These days, she’s definitely not sharing them at the office in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, but we’re sure she’s looking forward to that day when the time is right at her new digs in the White House.
4. She wants Americans to cut back on added sugars and soda
The average American diet gets 42 percent of calories from added sugars, refined grains (which are processed foods like cereal and white rice), and starchy vegetables such as potatoes, according to a study in the prestigious medical journal JAMA. Not surprisingly, that far exceeds the amount of daily added sugar that we are supposed to allow, which is no more than 100 calories a day, or the equivalent of six teaspoons, (which is roughly 5 to 10 percent of our total calories), according to nutrition experts. In the CNN town hall, Harris made it clear that what Americans eat is problematic and that we need to talk about the “amount of sugar” we eat, as well as the amount of soda we drink.
5. She loves cooking healthy food at home and teaching others like Corey Booker
As we all know, if you make it yourself, it’s probably healthier. Harris has long loved cooking meals at home, and she appears to be a seasoned chef, citing some of her most frequently used cookbooks as Alice Waters’ produce-forward The Art of Simple Food and Toni Tipton-Martin’s African American tome, Jubilee.
She also considers vegan senator Cory Booker a close friend and recently made strides in helping him with his culinary chops. “He’s a vegan, but he doesn’t cook. I said, ‘Are you figuring out how to cook?’ He was like, ‘I could use some help,’” she recalled in a recent interview with Glamour. “So I Facetimed him and I showed him how to chop an onion and how to chop a carrot and all that. And I gave him this recipe for lentils. And that was my birthday gift to him.”
Can we get a Facetime cooking sesh, Madame Vice President?
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