When Eric Adams talks about his morning routine, it sounds pretty exhausting.

Get up at five, meditate, exercise, followed by a green smoothie.

And then the day really starts for the new mayor of New York.

Anyone who follows Adams' team on social media also knows what the mayor eats during the day.

In his first week of office, for example, kale, quinoa, sweet potatoes, broccoli and tofu.

Or a bowl with peas, carrots, beetroot, lentils and spinach.

All without animal products, of course.

Because Eric Adams is New York's first vegan mayor.

Sofia Dreisbach

Editor in politics.

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At first glance, the Mayor fulfills many clichés. Over and over again he describes in interviews, conversations and podcasts in my-body-is-my-temple manner how being vegan changed him, made him healthy. On YouTube you can watch him for 7 minutes and 16 seconds as he prepares his smoothie in a figure-hugging white shirt: cocoa, acai, maca, coconut and moringa powder, locust bean gum, berries and a handful of kale (“das Secret"). Another video shows the sixty-one-year-old on day two after his inauguration on New Year's Eve in a suit on his bike on his way to a television interview: "It's up to you, New York!"

But Adams, the city's second black mayor, has not made vegan and healthier food for New Yorkers one of his topics for the next few years for fashion reasons. When he opened his eyes one morning in March 2016 - Adams was still the district mayor of Brooklyn at the time - he could barely make out the outline of his alarm clock. He was blind in the left eye and bloodshot in the right. His fingers and toes tingled and numb; he had a hell of a stomach ache. A revival experience for Adams.

The doctor diagnosed a stomach ulcer and type 2 diabetes. Because Adams would not believe it, he visited the best doctors in town.

They all said: medication and insulin for the rest of his life.

They all gave him documents: How you live with diabetes.

And Adams?

Instead, he wants to have googled "reverse diabetes".

This inspiration came "from somewhere in the universe".

So since 2016, the democrat has given up animal products, excessive salt, sugar and oil.

He regained his eyesight, lost weight, pushed back diabetes - and wrote a book about it: “Finally healthy.

A plant-based approach to the prevention and reversal of diabetes and other chronic diseases. "

"Food is the new front line in the fight for civil rights"

When it comes to nutrition, Adams has not minced his mouth, not before and not since the election as 110th Mayor of New York. Unhealthy food is the cause of many problems for him. "Food is the new frontline in the fight for civil rights," Adams recently told The Times newspaper. “I think it's the hot topic in America, if not all over the world.” It used to be said that food was our medicine. Yes, so Adams: “Our food makes us sick.” In a podcast by the vegan ultra athlete Rich Roll, he put it even more drastically in August: “We are an unhealthy society. Everything we do is unhealthy. We have a junk food mentality both in our diet and mentally. We are really in very bad shape. "

Adam's own family has a long history of diabetes.

When he was diagnosed, his mother, who had since died, had been suffering from diabetes for 15 years and had had to inject insulin for seven years.

A sister had lost a kidney due to diabetes and an aunt had died of it at the age of 57.

"I thought that was normal," writes Adams in his book.

When his mother once forgot her medicine, almost everyone was able to help out at a family reunion: "My family had pills in all the colors of the rainbow."