Dear President Clinton:

I hold you as the greatest president to have served this country in my lifetime – not to mention being the coolest and the best musician. A great day for me was January 26, 2013, when a letter arrived on your official stationery and signed with your own pen (nice pen, by the way) regarding my book, Main Street Vegan. You wrote: “I’m delighted that you’re helping to make the vegan lifestyle more accessible and achievable for as many people as possible….”

You can imagine how dispirited I am that your recent appearance on Rachael Ray confirmed the rumors I’ve heard for months: you’ve given up on being vegan. Now, obviously, the way anyone eats is a personal choice, but I feel sad that you may never have been shown how this particular dietary choice is, well, way more than a diet. Sure, eating whole, plant-based foods is a profoundly healthful way for people to nourish themselves. It is the only practice – dietary or medical – proven, re-proven, and never disproven to reverse cardiovascular disease, the condition that got you looking at healthier eating to begin with. But it goes so much further, all the way to the essence of holistic health. How can we be genuinely healthy when we’re causing others to suffer?

There are plenty of ways to approach nutrition for general health and certainly for weight loss. Any of them is likely to be superior to the SAD (Standard American Diet), widely known for its soda and fried chicken, its pizza and Buffalo wings, and the 21st century “cup of coffee,” a 16-ounce caffeinated milkshake. But only in getting the animals off our plates are we eating for integrity as well as health. I know of no other dietary choice that puts compassion ahead of convenience.

In addition, only by moving away from animal agriculture can we stem the tide – if it’s not too late – of environmental disaster. I’m sure you’re as familiar as I am with the assessments of the UN and the World Bank that raising animals for food is the number one human-induced cause of climate change, not to mention water use and water pollution, topsoil erosion and rainforest loss.

Focusing on fish doesn’t solve the problem. Ninety percent of the fish that once swam our oceans have been fished away in the past century. The oceans are emptying so rapidly that the scientific consensus is that by 2048 there will be, for all practical purposes, no fish in the sea.

One of the statements you reportedly made on TV was: “It’s hard being a vegan to get enough good quality protein…”I know your current physician is of the low-carb school of thought. Dietary philosophies are largely that: philosophies. You’ve dealt with philosophies all your life, and with politicians clinging to one ideology or another, sometimes despite the facts, or when everybody had some piece of the truth and together might have had it all. Diets – and doctors – aren’t much different.

In this country, vegans get more than enough protein; non-vegans get way more than enough – and the excess may not be a good thing. Among the vegan athletes apparently getting protein of sufficient quality are MMA’s Mac Danzig, the NFL’s David Carter, strongman Patrik Baboumian who walked 10 meters (32.8 feet) with 550 kilograms (just over 1212 pounds) on his shoulders, and ultramarathoner Rich Roll who did five Ironman-style events in a week.

You also said, “I know a lot of fat vegans…” Come on, Bill: you know a lot of fat Democrats and you’re not leaving the party. When I went vegan back in the 80s, it seemed that everybody who did it lost weight – I’ve kept off sixty pounds since Reagan was in office. These days there are all kinds of vegan convenience and snack foods so vegans can choose to be as fat as other Americans. Democracy in action!

Those of us who want to be trim and fit limit the amount of processed foods we eat, and favor instead vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, and some nuts and seeds. Grains? OMG, aren’t grains the carbo-devil? Well, they haven’t been for all the human populations they’ve kept alive for millennia, but you know what? They’re not required. Raw-food vegans rarely eat them, and those whose take on veganism is more eco-Atkins (higher protein and fat, lower carb) go easy on them too. There’s plenty of food left to eat.

It’s all so American: about choice. And self-determination. Forging your destiny. And statistically, plant-eaters are still the BMI champs. In the huge Adventist Health Study-2, looking at dietary patterns of omnivores, fishivores (pesco-vegetarian is a contradiction in terms), lacto-ovo-vegetarians, and vegans, only the last group came in under the mean for being overweight.

As my husband – a grown-up Missouri boy who lived on steaks and burgers when I met him – said when we discussed this: “Being vegan isn’t about being thin. It’s about compassion and respect for all living beings.” And yet, compassion, blended with a modicum of good sense, has side effects. For me, these include effortlessly keeping off weight for a really long time, and being free of pathologies and pharmaceuticals.

Instead of retiring next month, which the calendar and the Social Security Administration say I could do, I’m planning the tour for my next book, The Good Karma Diet, and moving into production with a feature film, Miss Liberty. She’s a fictional cow who escapes from a slaughterhouse. Because more and more people are waking up to the fact that if we don’t have to kill in order to eat, let’s not.

When you wrote to me two years ago, you concluded your note with “All my best for continued health and happiness in the year ahead,” and I wish that to you right now.

~ Victoria Moran

Victoria Moran is longtime vegan, author, and radio host, as well as the director of Main Street Vegan Academy. Her 12th book, The Good Karma Diet, is available now for preorder. Follow her various goings-on on Twitter: @Victoria_Moran, @MainStreetVegan, @MissLiberty.