Many Hollywood stars have adopted the vegan lifestyle so it’s easy to wonder whether popular actor Ashton Kutcher is among them.
Ashton Kutcher is not vegan. He did experiment with a fruit based diet as preparation for portraying Steve Jobs in the film “Jobs” but found it extremely difficult. He does include a lot of vegetables in his daily meals but also eats dairy and meat.
Read on to learn more about Kutcher’s terrible experience as a “fruitarian” and how he has since embraced vegetables as a large part of his diet.
Fruitarian
While preparing to portray Steve Jobs in the 2013 biopic “Jobs”, Ashton Kutcher attempted to follow Jobs’ unusual “fruitarian” diet. This consisted mostly of fruit, seeds, grains and nuts, as well as encouraging regular fasting.
Jobs believed fruit had “healing properties” and stuck to his strict diet even as his health declined due to illness. Kutcher tried to replicate this, including drinking carrot juice almost daily as a replacement for other foods.
Unfortunately, the diet had negative results and led to Kutcher suffering terrible pain in his abdomen. After being rushed to hospital, he was diagnosed with pancreatitis.
It isn’t certain that the “fruitarian” diet was to blame for this bout of pancreatitis but it is clear that following such a strict diet did nothing to improve Kutcher’s health. For most people, it’s more realistic to enjoy fruit and other plant based products as part of a wider range instead of as the entirety of their diet.
You can hear Ashton talking about his traumatic time as a “fruitarian” from a screening at the Sundance Film Festival below
Embracing Vegetables
Mila Kunis, who married Ashton Kutcher in 2015, has talked about encouraging her husband to eat more vegetables as part of his diet. This doesn’t stem from any kind of vegan ideology but concerns about ensuring Kutcher’s long term health and wellbeing.
Kunis is a keen cook and enjoys experimenting with different spices and flavours. She has been discovering new ways to introduce vegetables as part of the family’s daily dishes, embracing current cooking trends.
The main reason for an increased vegetable intake is reducing cholesterol, which is one of the leading causes of coronary heart disease. Kutcher’s meals include cauliflower and jackfruit, with Kunis encouraging him to replace fatty meats such as pork with healthier alternatives.
While Ashton and Mila seemingly have no interest in going vegan, they are clearly aware of the benefits of vegetables as part of their daily meals. Even without becoming vegetarian, a varied diet is a key part of protecting personal wellbeing.
Plant-Based Diet
While Ashton Kutcher is not vegan, nor even vegetarian, he has experienced one of the strictest forms of vegan diet.
His time as a “fruitarian” before playing Steve Jobs wasn’t an enjoyable one and might have seriously affected his health but we can’t know for sure.
In any case, he definitely did not enjoy the extreme diet, even in the short term.
After his preparation for “Jobs”, Kutcher probably won’t be in a hurry to try any strict, plant-based diets again. He has been quoted as saying “Don’t drink too much carrot juice. That’s the moral of the story.”
With encouragement from his wife, Mila Kunis, Ashton has accepted more vegetables into his diet as a way of reducing cholesterol, including replacing some red meats with green vegetables. This was done for a healthier lifestyle, rather than for moral reasons.
Whatever somebody’s motive for adding more vegetables to their diet, the health benefits are well documented. Taking it to the extreme is not for everybody and Kutcher’s horror story of the “fruitarian” diet is probably enough to discourage others from trying it.