Is Arnold Schwarzenegger vegan? Here’s his opinion on plant-based eating

Arnold Schwarzenegger has ditched meat and dairy to focus on plant-based eating

Image: @schwarzenegger Instagram

Mohsina Dodhiya14th June 202314th June 2023Celebrity, Food, News

The ‘Terminator’ star has regularly endorsed the benefits of a plant-based lifestyle.

Bodybuilder and action star Arnold Schwarzenegger has long been considered the peak of physical fitness and performance. And, the 75-year- old has been quite vocal with his praise for plant-based foods.

The Austrian-American actor has even revealed how following a plant-based regimen has left him ‘feeling fantastic’ while significantly lowering his cholesterol levels.

He has also gone on record terminating myths about protein consumption. In the 2018 vegan documentary, The Game Changers, a film, that he co-produced, he said: “I ate a lot of meat. They show these commercials – ‘steak, that’s what a man eats’ – selling the idea that a real man eats meat.

“But you’ve got to understand – that’s marketing. That’s not based on reality”

The hit film which ‘documented the explosive rise of plant-based eating in professional sports’ has been watched by more than 100 million viewers, and is now getting a sequel.

With Arnie passionately advocating a plant-based diet for a few years now, many are curious and want to know what dietary regime does he follow?

Is Arnie vegan?

The former California governor went plant-based in 2017. In recent years, he further reduced his appetite for meat, swapping it with plant-based proteins like lentils, salad and veggie burgers.

The actor is said to follow an 80% vegan diet.

In the April podcast of Arnold’s Pump Club, he said that while he consumes eggs, salmon and chicken for his protein intake, he has “more and more veggie burgers with lentils and beans.”

Schwarzenegger also provided a breakdown of what he eats in a day

“In the morning after my workout, I usually have oatmeal with Greek yogurt or granola,” he said.

“For lunch, I always have a salad, sometimes with a plant-based burger or maybe salmon or chicken. Other times, it’s with a scramble or omelette.”

“For dinner, I always have soup. I like to eat light for my last meal.”

In an earlier interview with Entertainment Tonight, he said: “I ate a lot of meat – I ate my 10, 15 eggs a day. I had my 250 grams of protein in a day because I weighed 250 pounds.

“As I got older and I started reading up on it, I recognized the fact that you really don’t have to get your protein from meat – or from animals. So we started going more in a direction of a vegetarian kind of diet.

“Now we’re doing it the right way, with spices, and all of a sudden I love it much more than the meat.”

Celebrity power

There’s no denying the impact of celebrity influence on promoting a message, including advocating vegan or plant-based lifestyles.

And who better to play the part than Arnie, who even extended his message by touching upon the impact of animal agriculture on greenhouse gas emissions. Back in 2017, he took to social media to discuss the issue. He said: “From an environmental point of view we know that raising livestock creates 28% of our greenhouse gases in the world.

“We have to reduce our greenhouse gases because we’re killing seven million people a year because of our pollution. We can do better than that.

“Each and every one of us has the power to cut our consumption of meat. I just think we should all work together to reduce our pollution – I think this is a very important issue.”