Looking for the perfect #EcoMonday story to retweet on Twitter? Did you hear the one about the celebrity athlete who went from being a boxer who was known for taking a bite out of human ears to promoting other star celebs eat vegan? It looks like professional fighter and ex-con Mike Tyson has become a full-fledged vegetarian and he is asking all his friends to consider joining him in going vegan.
Green celebrity actor and producer Alan Cumming, already known for his support of global health concerns through work with charities like American Foundation for AIDS Research, the Global Fund, and Stand Up to Cancer, has made a New Year’s Resolution to go completely vegan in 2012. He credits his decision to former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson. Believe it or not, Mike Tyson, with his violent past, has been a vegan since 2010, in spite of criticism that he wouldn’t stick with it. But Alan Cumming decided if Tyson could do it, so could he.
ContactMusic.com had this to say:
In a post on his Twitter.com blog on Friday (30Dec11), [Cumming] writes, “That’s it. I was toying with going the whole hog to veganism and now I see Mike Tyson is the new Vegan posterboy! Sold! Get ye back, seitan!”
Alan Cumming had mostly been sticking to a vegetarian diet, because he didn’t care for the taste or texture of meat. He is known for bringing vegetarian and vegan dishes to work, and is quite outspoken about his diet, citing it in interviews and other venues, according to healthy eating website HappyCow.com; but he’d been struggling to make the switch to a green diet completely free of animal products.
It could be that Cumming, like many others, was concerned that he would be unable to get complete nutrition from a vegan diet (which is untrue). Or maybe the green celebrity worried that he might not be able to stick to such a strict New Year’s Resolution, healthy as it is. Many people were skeptical of Mike Tyson when he announced he had gone vegan in 2010.
Fans and skeptics alike thought Tyson’s switch was little more than a PR stunt to distance himself from a violent past. But Tyson stuck to his resolution and has inspired humanitarian star celeb Alan Cumming to stick to his New Year’s Resolution as well, joining the ranks of vegan celebrities like singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, actor Russell Brand, and comedienne Ellen DeGeneres.
Read more about Mike Tyson and other star celebs who go green here as well. For instance, Venus Williams and her sister Serena just became vegetarians who eat an all raw food vegan diet to promote health.
What do you think of Alan Cumming’s new greener vegan diet? Does he inspire you to make the switch as well, or do you have another green or health lifestyle New Year’s Resolution for 2012? Let us know!