Time in office
January 20, 1993–January 20, 2001
Vital Statistics
Born: August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas
Currently: Living in Chappaqua, New York
Political Affiliation
Democratic Party
First Bite
Bill Clinton’s fast-food habit was famous enough by 1992 that Saturday Night Live built a whole sketch around it: Actor Phil Hartman’s Clinton jogs into a McDonald’s mid-campaign, grabbing fries off strangers’ trays between policy talking points. Funny at the time, but in hindsight, not so funny given the quadruple bypass operation he underwent after he left office.
THE MAIN COURSE
Bill Clinton genuinely loved food, especially rich food and fast food.
He preferred heavy, fatty, and meat-forward meals, squarely typical of his generation and his Arkansas upbringing. Fried chicken, roast beef sandwiches, jalapeño cheeseburgers loaded with the works, chili con queso so delicious that a restaurateur called it “addictive,” and cinnamon rolls “nearly as big as hubcaps. He loved barbecue, tamales and French fries, two-pound steaks and greasy cheeseburgers at Doe’s Eat Place in Little Rock, Arkansas, and an Egg McMuffin from McDonald’s whenever he wasn’t actively dieting. Vegetables?—not so much.Â
One of his all-time favorites was enchiladas stuffed with chicken, cheese, and a homemade enchilada sauce. Cherry pie ranked among his favorite desserts, so much so that during the darkest days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, his daughter Chelsea took up baking as a coping mechanism and made him one herself. His wife Hillary summed up his relationship with food before her own intervention began: “He loves to eat, even when things are not always right for him.
Clinton’s relationship to food eventually became a genuine health crisis. After developing serious coronary artery disease, Clinton worked with physician Dean Ornish to make major changes to his diet and lifestyles. Dr. Ornish, famous for reversing heart disease through lifestyle change, and with support from Hillary, worked to overhaul the president’s diet, emphasizing meals low in fat and heavy on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, seafood, and veggie burgers. White House executive chef Pierre Chambrin refused to prepare healthier meals and resigned, causing the Clintons to stop all formal entertaining until they found a more agreeable replacement.
The new chef, Walter Scheib, arrived in April 1994 on the recommendation of “California cuisine” pioneer Alice Waters, and his hiring triggered the biggest shift in White House cooking in over thirty years. Scheib pushed the kitchen toward fresher American ingredients and regional cuisine, moving firmly away from the old European formality. He was mandated to help the White House “look like America” through menus that reflected the country’s genuine diversity. Clinton, for his part, developed an unusually casual rapport with kitchen staff. Sous chef Marti Mongiello recalled the president dropping by just to chat or watch TV with the crew, sometimes for an hour at a stretch, a level of informality that took some adjusting to but was ultimately well liked.
But even that dietary overhaul wasn’t enough. In 2004, four years after leaving office, Clinton underwent quadruple bypass surgery and afterward adopted a largely vegan diet. (He later acknowledged that he still allowed himself an omelet or a piece of salmon about once a week.) Chelsea was pulled into the same orbit, so impressed by the new White House chef’s health-focused cooking that she asked for cooking lessons and for a decade became a vegetarian.Â
In 2026, Ornish observed, “After his bypass surgery, he became much more committed to following the diet that my colleagues and I proved could often reverse the progression of even severe coronary heart disease. I am grateful that he continues to do well today. Whatever your politics, when a President of the United States decides to eat more healthfully, it sets a great example for everyone—especially one who was previously known for jogging to McDonald’s.”
Hillary had her own memorable brush with food politics during the 1992 campaign, and it nearly became a liability. Asked to defend her legal career against critics who thought a future first lady should behave more traditionally, she famously snapped back, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession.” The remark set off a public backlash, with critics accusing her of disrespecting stay-at-home mothers. Family Circle magazine responded by launching what became the First Lady Bake-off, pitting Hillary’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe against Barbara Bush’s (President George H.W. Bush’s wife) classic chocolate chip cookies in a national reader poll. Hillary’s recipe narrowly beat Barbara Bush’s by a 52 to 48 percent vote by readers.
Entertaining under the Clintons ran famously big. They hosted weekly receptions, with themes that included an Eastern Shore cookout, a New Orleans jazz celebration, and a congressional luau, just to name a few. The receptions often drew 200 to 400 guests at a time, utilizing the South Lawn whenever the weather allowed. Scheib’s range stretched from intimate rooftop parties to state dinners for up to 700 people and holiday menus serving several thousand. The dinner honoring Nelson Mandela stood out as one of the most anticipated events of the entire eight-year administration, and the White House’s Millennium New Year’s Eve celebration reportedly kept Scheib awake orchestrating food for twenty-nine consecutive hours. State dinners leaned hard into the honored country’s own cuisine while still spotlighting American ingredients: A 1995 dinner for Mexican President Zedillo featured a sweet corn and tequila ice cream mold, complete with a live mariachi band.
Even the White House grounds got a culinary upgrade: frustrated with inconsistent produce from outside suppliers, Scheib planted a rooftop vegetable garden growing tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and herbs for the family’s private meals. He utilized local farms and co-ops to source produce for larger events.
Clinton’s food and agriculture policy was extensive, touching farm support, trade, and food safety:
- Immediately after he was elected, he was faced with a food-safety crisis when E. coli bacteria in under-cooked beef at Jack in the Box restaurants sickened hundreds of people and killed four children. That spurred important improvements in the country’s food-safety regulations.
- The 1996 farm bill, commonly called the “Freedom to Farm Act,” replaced the previous link between crop prices and farm income payments with fixed payments independent of market conditions. That gave farmers far more flexibility in what they planted.
- The Agricultural Research, Extension, and Education Reform Act of 1998 directed an additional $120 million a year into food and agriculture genome research, food safety, and biotechnology.
- The Agricultural Risk Protection Act of 2000—one of the largest crop‑insurance expansions ever—increased premium subsidies, broadened coverage options, and strengthened program integrity. Earlier reforms in 1994 had already caused insured acreage and total liability to surge during the mid‑1990s. ARPA built on that momentum, making crop insurance a central pillar of the farm safety net in the decades that followed.
- A landmark 1999 deal with China ended long-standing bans on American wheat, meat, citrus, and poultry.
- A month before leaving office, the Clinton administration launched the long-awaited federal National Organic Standards, establishing clear rules for what could legally be labeled “organic.” That implemented the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act.
Clinton’s most striking food-policy moment, though, came years after he left office. In 2008, addressing a United Nations gathering on the global food crisis, he openly criticized his own administration’s approach. He admitted, “We all blew it, including me when I was president,” for treating food crops as pure commodities rather than as necessities for the world’s poor. He faulted the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for ending programs that undermined low-income nations’ self-sufficiency. It was a rare, blunt admission of error by a former president.
Clinton left office in January 2001 having weathered impeachment, an economic boom, and a personal health challenge that persuaded the junk-food eater to radically transform his diet. Post-presidency, he built the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative, channeling much of his energy and resources into global health and disaster relief work, often working alongside former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Try it at home
Chicken Enchiladas
One of Clinton’s favorites from his omnivorous days: Shredded cooked chicken is folded into sour cream and grated cheddar, rolled into tortillas, and smothered in a slow-simmered tomato and green chile sauce. This hearty, cheesy comfort food comes straight from an official White House recipe card.
