President Donald Trump's aversion to vegetables and love of junk food are well known, and a former White House physician has described his attempt to introduce more healthy eating into the president's diet.

"We were making the ice cream less accessible, we were putting cauliflower into the mashed potatoes," Dr. Ronny Jackson told The New York Times.

Trump was found to be clinically obese in his physical exam last year, weighing in at 243 pounds.

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The former White House physician Dr. Ronny L. Jackson has described to The New York Times his plot to introduce more vegetables into President Donald Trump's junk-food-heavy diet.

Jackson, who is campaigning to represent Texas' 13th Congressional District, told The Times that before leaving the role as Trump's physician he had been determined to cut the president's weight by 10 to 15 pounds, possibly by introducing an exercise bike.

"The exercise stuff never took off as much as I wanted it to," he said. "But we were working on his diet. We were making the ice cream less accessible, we were putting cauliflower into the mashed potatoes."

Jackson's glowing endorsement of the president's physical condition while he was White House physician — where he claimed the president could live "200 years" with dietary improvements — had earned him Trump's favor.

In 2018, Trump nominated Jackson to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, but he was forced to withdraw his candidacy after reports emerged of allegations of faulty prescription practices and drunkenness at work.

Trump with Dr. Ronny Jackson after leaving Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. Carolyn Caster/AP

Trump's love of junk food is well known.

He famously fueled his presidential campaign with Diet Coke and McDonald's, and he served a Big Mac buffet on silver platters when Clemson University's football team visited the White House in January 2019.

Some foreign leaders have catered to Trump's indifference to haute cuisine, and on the president's first official visit to Japan in 2017 the country's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, eschewed the country's traditional delicacies and served the president a beef burger after they discussed state affairs.

The president was reportedly placed on a crash diet, swapping junk food for salads, after a physical by Jackson in 2018 found him to be just 1 pound short of clinical obesity.

But it seemed to have little effect, with the president found to have gained weight in last year's physical, weighing in at 243 pounds.