The VeggieMakers, or, We Are the 5%
In 2018, Gallup published poll findings estimating that about five percent of everyone in the United States considered themselves a vegetarian. You might be intrigued to know that, despite the propaganda that says plant-based diet is something only for white hippies with daddy issues, people of color were more than three times as likely to identify as vegetarian.
I’m one of that five percent. I’ve been a strict vegetarian since, oh, some point around the middle of March, 2017. I’ve not eaten a single bit of meat (purposely, anyway) since then, though I’m not a vegan and still indulge in eggs and cheese. My fifth vegetarian anniversary is the occasion that sparked my interest in finding stories about vegetarianism and veganism in the HistoryMakers Digital Archive. So, here’s what I found: Overall, I did discover that a fair share of people in the Digital Archive do report practicing plant-based diets.
Religion and Spirituality
By far, it seemed to me that vegetarianism was most likely going to be brought up in the context of a person’s religion or spiritual practice. And, of those HistoryMakers who cited this as their reason for being vegetarian, I’d say a slim majority of them mentioned it because they were members of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, or SDA. This Christian denomination is marked by the fact that it compels members to worship on Saturday, not Sunday, and goes out of its way to encourage healthy living. Oftentimes, this idea of healthy living winds up with SDA members being vegetarians. As HistoryMaker Brenda Wood, who was raised in the church, says in her interview:
“[Vegetarianism is] encouraged [in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church]. It's not required to be vegetarian. It is encouraged just for healthy living because that's part of the tenets of the church, to be, you know, to try to live a healthy lifestyle. Your body is, you know, the temple of the Lord and all of that.”
HistoryMaker Ben Carson, a noted neurosurgeon is a Seventh-Day Adventist and a vegetarian. (He’s also, unfortunately, a Republican politician.) In his interview, he notes that his favorite food is vegetarian chili and estimates that about 50% to 60% of the church is vegetarian. In actuality, a 2007 study from the church itself found that about 46% of its members called themselves vegetarians—although that figure includes 10% who said they were pescatarians. So, really, it’s more like 36%, because the last time I checked, fish were still animals. But!!! 36% is still a pretty high number.
Alfred Richard Fornay, a magazine editor, was raised SDA and therefore raised vegetarian. He had this to say about growing up with vegetarian dietary restrictions due to his religion:
“We knew we were different. But we, but when it came to competition in terms of schools and qualifying, we met the same demands that everyone else was required to meet. But the Sabbath was an issue, and we had to adjust. We were not strict vegetarians at home. My father [Alfred Fornay] ate meat. And when meatloaf was made, we all ate meatloaf, you know. When a vegetarian meal was made, we ate vegetarian. But when you arrived at the campus at boarding school [Pine Forge Institute; Pine Forge Academy, Pine Forge, Pennsylvania], it was all vegetarian, you know. So we would sneak off campus at night sometimes and go to Douglass County [sic. Douglass Township, Pennsylvania] and get a Philly cheesesteak, and sin (laughter).”
But, of course, the SDA church wasn’t the only religious group advocating vegetarianism mentioned by the HistoryMakers. Lisa Price, the founder of Carol’s Daughter hair product company, said that she was part of a “cult” that held classes on vegetarianism. According to Price, this “cult,” called the Ausar Auset Society, had its members eat different vegetables and fruits depending on the day and “energy” of the foods.
Health and Wellness
Other people in the Digital Archive said that they ate a vegetarian or mostly vegetarian diet explicitly due to the health reasons, divorced from any spiritual or religious reasons.
Antwone Fisher, whose autobiography Finding Fish was the source material for a 2002 drama film starring Denzel Washington and Derek Luke, mentioned being a vegetarian in his interview and states that it’s because of his health:
“It seems like it would be hard not to drink soda or not to have a chicken wing or like a steak or something, but after you don't have it for a while, it's not like what you're looking for and as a result you wind up benefiting someway, somehow, you know I think--health wise and I feel like I have little kids [Azure Fisher and Indigo Fisher] and you know I have to be here for them.”
MaVynee "Beach Lady" Betsch and Dr. Heloise Westbrook expressed similar sentiments, and reported eating almost entirely vegetarian diets. A couple of people mentioned Dick Gregory’s health-minded advocacy for vegetarianism, although Gregory curiously didn’t mention this in his own interview.
Animal Rights
As I perused the Digital Archive for clips related to vegetarianism, veganism, or the general concept of plant-based diets, something that struck me was that essentially none of the HistoryMakers cited concern for the welfare of animals as their principal reason for ditching meat. A search for the specific phrase “animal rights” yielded only 13 clips, most of which didn’t really have to do at all with what I was looking for. So that’s pretty interesting on its own, and I’m wondering if the fact that so many of the HistoryMakers are older people has anything to do with it. Coupled with the fact that so many people (especially older Black ones) grew up on or near farms where animal slaughter was not only unremarkable but considered necessary for survival—this is perhaps unsurprising.
When I did see animals brought up in clips regarding a plant-based diet, it was usually as an addendum to the spiritual/religious reason. In his interview, for example, Russel Simmons talks about his diet as integral to his spiritual practice, and cites the fact that animals have a sense of self-preservation as his reason for not eating them:
“You know, I don't eat nothing that runs from me (audience laughter), if I could help it. I don't want to eat any egg, any dairy, anything--I don't want nothing, I don't want to contribute to nothing that promotes suffering, if I can help it.”
I did find one anecdote while looking up “animal rights” that I thought was interesting and worth sharing, though. In her interview, Malvyn Johnson (née Hooser) discusses how when she was in the sixth grade she won an essay-writing contest put on by Philadelphia’s branch of the animal rights organization, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). The assignment was to compose an essay about why the student liked animals. Johnson won the contest, but almost didn’t receive the award because the representative from the ASPCA was prejudiced against Black people—and had selected her essay as the best one before learning that she wasn’t white. Just goes to show some people will really oppose every other societal ill before they check their own racial biases.
Hence the popularity of this meme, which is really a still from the TV show Community.
Welp, that’s about all I have for this week. It was certainly interesting to see what people in the Digital Archive had to say about plant-based diets. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to order some Beyond Chicken from KFC, because sometimes you really do miss meat as a vegetarian and it’s a good approximation.