How vegan activist Heather Mills took control of her health with plant-based diet choices
Paul McCartney’s ex-wife Heather Mills reveals how a plant-based diet and later focus on low-fodmap foods have had huge impacts on her life
It is hard to imagine Heather Mills, one of the world’s best known veganism and animal rights campaigners, as a “Northeast sausage-and-mash girl”.
“It’s so funny to think of the evolutions we go through in our short lives,” says the English entrepreneur, philanthropist and activist, who grew up in a working-class family in Northern England in the 1970s, for whom sausages were a weekend luxury.
Now in her fifties, Mills’ fame stems from her former modelling career and her marriage to one of the four Beatles, Paul McCartney, between 2002 and 2008. She also won four gold medals at the US Adaptive Alpine Skiing National Championships in 2012, and was inducted into Guinness World Records in 2023 as the fastest disabled female skier after a long verification process. In March 2015, she had reached a speed of 164.95 km/h in Vars, France.
But before then, a life-changing accident transformed the way she thought about health – and led her to become the person she is today.
In 1993, Mills was hit by a police motorcycle responding to an emergency call in London. She suffered a punctured lung, fractured skull and broken pelvis, and her left leg had to be amputated below the knee.
A few months later, she had to have another operation that further shortened her leg.