My DH is reading the biography Truman by David McCullough and discovered that Truman was indeed a low carber. From the book:

"In the summer of his seventh year in office, the sixty-seven- year-old President looked the picture of health. His color
was good; his clothes, impeccable as always, fit perfectly; his walk was firm and full of purpose. He saw people all day, yet seemed to have time for everyone. Visitors to the Oval Office found a man who stood immediately to greet them, shoulders back and smiling, and who, at his desk, gave them his full attention. Radiating vitality and confidence, he seemed completely at home in his job, as one could only be with experience. Mens sana in corpore sano was the old adage he had learned in high school Latin, “a sound mind in a sound body.” Clark Clifford, who dropped by on occasion, would say he never knew anyone of the President’s age who remained physically and psychologically so sound and solid.

He still walked two miles “most every morning,” as Truman had recorded in his diary.

"I eat no bread but one piece of toast at breakfast, no butter, no sugar, no sweets. Usually have fruit, one egg, a strip of bacon and half a glass of skimmed milk for breakfast; liver and bacon or sweetbreads or ham or fish and spinach and another nonfattening vegetable for lunch with fruit for dessert. For dinner I have a fruit cup, steak, a couple of nonfattening vegetables and an ice, orange, pineapple or raspberry…So – I maintain my waist line and can wear suits bought in 1935!"

The morning bourbon – an ounce of Old Grandad or Wild Turkey taken after the two-mile walk and a few setting-up exercises and the rubdown that usually followed the morning walk – had also become routine. Whether the bourbon was on doctor’s orders, or a bit of old-fashioned home medicine of the kind many of his generation thought beneficial to the circulation past sixty (“to get the engine going”), is not known. But it seemed to agree with him."

(Pardon the lack of proper punctuation; the block quotes and italics were there when I typed this in Word, then disappeared when I copied it here.)

Pretty good example of the long term effects of not eating tons of potatoes, grains and sugar, wouldn't you say? And he lived to the age of eighty-five.

Karla

A little known fact is that his grandmother survived the ordeal of being scalped by Indians. After which Harry S. Truman's father's mother always wore a cap.

Here is another little know fact:

What does the S. in Hary S. Truman stand for?

Nothing, is middle name is "S". He was given the middle initial S for his two grandfathers who had names beginning with a S: Anderson Shippe Truman and Solomon Young.