Blacks and Greens:
A Tradition of Healthy Eating

In my two decades of being a vegan, I have heard many people refer to this way of eating as a white thing.

In fact, when I was (disastrously) introduced to vegetarianism in the 7th grade, I thought it was something that crazy white people did. It wasn’t until I got to college and heard a lecture by human rights activist and humorist Dick Gregory that I realized this was something that crazy black people did, too.

But that was more than 25 years ago. Times have changed. Today, there is no reason for anyone to still believe that eating healthy is a white thing and, conversely, that eating unhealthy is a black thing. Truth be told, there was actually no reason to believe it then, either.

Why? We have a long and strong tradition of eating healthy, plant-based foods. Even with our past and current health crises, large segments of black folks have been eating well and staying healthy for decades.

I believe that our experiences of blackness in this country are the reason many of us venture into healthy plant-based eating in the first place. When we start challenging racism, sexism, homophobia, imperialism, domestic terrorism against us, and other “isms,” we seek to free ourselves from oppressive cultural norms. That naturally extends into questioning what this society dictates we should eat and discovering for ourselves what are actually the healthiest foods for us to eat.

Consider this quote from Dick Gregory, who changed his diet as a result of his activism in the Civil Rights Movement. In his memoir, Callus on My Soul, Gregory wrote:

I had been a participant in all of the “major” and most of the “minor” civil rights demonstrations of the early sixties. Under the leadership of Dr. King, I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill” applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other--war, lynching, assassination, murder and the like--but in their practice of killing animals for food and sport. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life.

Dick Gregory was mentored by naturopathic doctor Alvenia Fulton, who opened the South Side of Chicago’s first health food establishment in the 1950s—The Pioneer Natural Health Food Store. Gregory and Fulton also collaborated to write Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' With Mother Nature in 1973, which influenced a generation of young people to open health food businesses across the country.

Here are some other black facts you may have missed:

MEET OUR NUTRITION EXPERT A nutritionist and 20-year vegan who leads worldwide seminars on vegan nutrition, Tracye McQuirter, MPH, helps people achieve extraordinary health through better food choices. Her new book titled By Any Greens Necessary: A Revolutionary Guide for Black Women Who Want to Eat Great, Get Healthy, Lose Weight, and Look Phat will be published on May 1, 2010. Tracye has a Master’s Degree in Public Health Nutrition from New York University, where she was awarded an academic fellowship and studied under renowned nutritionist Marion Nestle. Find out more...

• Today in Chicago, Karyn Calebrese owns the oldest continually operating vegan raw foods restaurant in the country, Karyn’s Fresh Corner, along with two other vegan establishments.
  
  
• Soul Vegetarian, started 3 decades ago, operates the world’s largest chain of vegan restaurants in the world, with 14 locations around the globe.
  
  
• African Americans started the first all-vegan restaurants and health food stores in the nation’s capitol more than three decades ago
  
  
• In a 2006 national poll of adult vegetarians by the Vegetarian Resource Group, the percentage of blacks who were meatless (8%) was higher than that of whites (7%). That meant there were more than 3 million black vegetarians. (The most recent poll does not include statistics by race.)
  
  
• African Americans buy more organic foods than any other group except Latinas, according to a 2007 study by the Hartman group, a leading natural foods market research firm.
  
  
• Queen Afua’s groundbreaking 1998 book Heal Thyself, which promotes a plant-based diet as part of a holistic lifestyle, sold more than 100,000 copies.
  
  
• I’m proud to say that in 1999, my sister and I started blackvegetarians.org, the first web site to support and inspire the nation’s millions of black vegetarians. Today there are web sites, blogs, and chat groups galore by and for black vegetarians.
  
  

So don’t buy into the myth that eating healthy is not a black thing. Both our past and present prove that it is.

Resources:

Marya Annette McQuirter and Tracye L. McQuirter,"Red, Black & Greens: The Politics of Soul Food in the 1960s," http://www.blackvegetarians.org/features/red,black&greens.htm.
January 2004

Karyn’s Raw Center
http://karynraw.com

Soul Vegetarian Restaurants
http://www.soulvegetarian.com/restaurants.php

Vegetarian Resource Group Poll
http://www.vrg.org/press/2009poll.htm

Blackvegetarians.org
http://www.blackvegetarians.org

Queen Afua
http://queenafua.moonfruit.com/#/get-the-products/4530589439

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