25 years of vegetarianism and a look into the future.

FOR THIS SPECIAL 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE of Vegetarian Journal, I could think of nothing more appropriate than reflecting on the changing state of vegetarianism over the past quarter of a century. I asked a number of prominent activists to help with this project. These are some of the people who have been involved in promoting vegetarianism for 25 years or more. With their unique and experienced perspectives, I took a look back at this country's rediscovery of vegetarianism in the 1960s and 1970s, a look at vegetarianism in the present, and a look into the future. Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts with us on this special occasion. We look forward to the next 25 years!

FRANCES MOORE LAPPE Author of Diet for a Small Planet

I grew up in Texas, so the idea of surviving without meat was considered utterly unthinkable. The dominant paradigm was that you could not be healthy without meat and that meat was the center of a healthy diet--meat is what made you strong and smart. I remember this advertisement that I referenced in an early edition of Diet for a Small Planet. There was a picture of filet mignon and it said, "This is what you serve if you want to impress your brother-in-law." Meat was what you ate to impress people as well as what you ate just to live and be strong.

I remember the early readers of Diet for a Small Planet, the young people who became vegetarian and their parents were terrified that they would die! And I remember joking with people that one of the most important things that my book did was relieve worried parents who thought their children were going to get sick and die without meat. People could not imagine a meal without meat. The meal was centered around the meat in the middle, and then you had your starch and your veggie, and that's what the meal was. To start to think of the meal in a different way is huge, and that's what I tried to do with the recipes in Diet for a Small Planet, to organize them in types of meals where you had different things in the center.

I thought Diet for a Small Planet was going to appeal to 500 people in the San Francisco Bay area, and I was going to publish it myself. When a New York publisher was interested and then it started to sell, I realized that there were millions of people looking for a way to have meaning in their everyday choices. It is so powerful that, in a world where people feel so powerless, they can feel that everyday choices, in choices that people make several times a day, ripple out and affect the earth and affect other people. I think that it was so cool for people to realize that every time they eat in the plant world, they are voting for a shift away from this very wasteful, destructive, and cruel system. It's something that's so moving, and so easy to do.

Now, we have knowledge about the danger of a meat-centered diet. That was brand new 25 years ago. When I was growing up, no one knew the research about heart disease related to saturated fats. And it has gone hand-in-hand with the environmental movement. When I wrote Diet for a Small Planet, the word 'ecology' had just barely reached its first birthday, so the fact that food had something to do with ecology and the environment was a brand new idea. People were beginning to think about the impact of their food consumption, and I think a lot of people were really moved to say, "Wait a minute, why do I need to eat a wasteful diet when I can eat one that is so good for me and the planet?" It's a win-win-win why not? And when I opened my eyes to the plant world, I realized that this was where the variety was--in texture, color, shape, and taste; there are endless possibilities. I think that is part of embracing other cuisines--it has allowed everyone to open up to all dimensions of a plant-centered diet and all the kinds of foods that you can create.

I have never felt comfortable predicting the future, but what I've seen in the past few years is books like Center for Science in the Public Interest's new book, Six Arguments for a Greener Diet;, I feel like it's come full circle. A new generation is discovering all of these reasons that are still powerful today. I think that the interest going forward is going to go a lot from ecological awareness and people like the Union of Concerned Scientists saying, "Yeah, you can get a Prius, but maybe just as important is eating low on the food chain," and people awakening to the fact that not eating meat is just as important as not driving a gas-guzzling car, or maybe more so. There is still a growing interest in animal cruelty--a motivation to relieve animal suffering--and I'm sure that will continue. But I think that equally strong and stronger will be the environmental impetus as people realize that we just can't tolerate this kind of waste.

SETH TIBBOTT

Inventor of Tofurky and Owner of Turtle Island Foods 

I first became a vegetarian in college. The year was 1973, and my first vegetarian meal was a bowl of lentils, rice, and onions from Frances Moore Lappe's classic Diet for a Small Planet. I was a teacher/naturalist in training so the environmental aspect of Lappe's book appealed to me. It just made sense that eating plants directly was smarter, more efficient, and better on our battered ecosystems. My mom was unimpressed. She grew up during the Depression and to her it all came down to protein. How was I going to get my protein, she would ask, whenever I called home from Ohio, where I was living. There were no natural foods stores then, but you could buy brightly colored rainbow bags of granola and yogurt, too, in the local head shop. Both items became a staple for me, along with boxes of vanilla wafers. Not a great diet but a start.

Flash forward to 1977 and I was working as a naturalist at outdoor schools in Oregon. My mom was still bugging me about protein, and the first rudimentary co-ops were forming in garages and old warehouses around Portland. I started buying soy grits and making them into soy burgers. Wandering the aisles of the supermarkets, I also was impressed to see entire shelves of yogurt and granola. I had been reading the books of Stephen Gaskin and his 1,700-acre farm in Tennessee. I believe they had over a thousand hippies living on The Farm, all of whom subsisted on a 'pure vegetarian' diet that was in reality vegan, but I never heard them use the word. They grew soybeans on The Farm and had sent people to the libraries of the National Institutes of Health in Washington, DC, to research how they could use all these soybeans. When I landed a naturalist job that summer in Tennessee on the banks of the Nolichucky River, I took a weekend visit to The Farm and brought back my first tempeh spores. My friends and I were living in tents then, but the weather was hot and humid, perfect for incubating tempeh in stainless steel pans outside. It was love at first bite, eating that first batch of tempeh on the banks of the Nolichucky with Silver Queen sweet corn and okara (soy pulp).

This is all background for 1980, which is when Turtle Island Soy Dairy was founded at Hope Co-op in Forest Grove, Oregon. Back then, the natural foods industry was in its infancy still. The dark, funky co-ops had moved out of the garages and some small stores like Natures in Portland were actually starting to buy new freezers and refrigerated cases. When I brought my first tempeh to the natural foods stores in Portland, it was very easy to get placement for all my three flavors: Soy Tempeh, Five Grain Tempeh, and Tempehroni, a sausage-shaped log of tempeh fermented with herbs and spices. In fact, the people working in the store were like, "Hey, what took you so long to come here? Now we can fill up our empty shelves with something!"

Acceptance from the public was slower and took a lot of education, demos, etc. In fact, during the '80s, soybeans did not really have a great reputation. There wasn't a lot of information (pre-Internet days here, so information traveled slowly, largely through collections of paper with words typed on them and bound together in something called 'books!') on the health benefits of soybeans and soyfoods in general. You could maybe buy tofu in a few enlightened supermarkets, but mostly water-packed tofu was only sold in natural foods stores. In the mid-80s the first Gardenburgers were produced and one of their big selling points was "soy free," which it said across the front of the box. This changed in the 1990s when more and more information became available about positive aspects of soybeans and vegetarian diets in general, culminating in the FDA allowing manufacturers to make health claims about soy protein.

Today, it's amazing to see the plethora of vegetarian products vying for shelf space in not only natural foods stores but grocery stores as well. It is many, many times easier to eat a healthy vegetarian or vegan diet than 25 years ago. The products just keep evolving and getting better and better. In 1980 you pretty much had to make your own vegetarian meals from scratch by a process involving ovens and stoves quaintly called 'cooking.' Now you just need a good freezer and microwave, and your options for quick, delicious tasty meals are literally too numerous to count.

Yet I am still puzzled by the strength of the meat industry and the fact that more about the staggering environmental and health impacts of carnivorous diets is not of greater concern. As I look forward, I believe that eventually these two issues will bubble up to the surface, pushing more and more people to change their diets. Something has got to give here. Best guess is that vegetarian foods will continue to improve in tastes and textures and gain larger and larger market share and acceptance. Meat raised from livestock may lose its dominant place in the American diet and may become an expensive 'delicacy' that only the rich can afford. I would imagine that some type of meat replacement (non-vegetarian) will be grown in labs on an industrial scale and compete with vegetarian meat replacements. This new synthetic meat may have some of the environmental/health concerns removed from it and actually will be marketed as an alternative to the vegetarian meat alternatives.

Evolution is a painstakingly slow process, but even though truth can be suppressed, spun, and twisted, eventually it all comes to the surface, and vegetarianism has too much truth and innate sensibility going for it not to bubble into an increasingly larger part of the world's diet in the years to come.

LAUREL ROBERTSON

Author of Laurel's Kitchen

Today, everyone knows that vegetarian eating is healthier! But in 'those days,' doctors and mothers (and sometimes maybe even we) fretted that our lives would be short and decrepit. Hard to believe now but true! Before Laurel} Kitchen was published in 1976, you could not find any popular scientifically sound nutritional information, vegetarian or not. And forget about finding good vegetarian recipes or restaurants. There's been a vast improvement since then!

On the other side, you were not surrounded by junk food 25 years ago. Most people sat down to meals of mostly real food. Yes, bread was white, and yes, you'd enjoy the occasional birthday cake. But junk wasn't everywhere, wasn't anything like often. Ominously, we see junk burrowing deeper. More and more, in the next 25 years, we will need to ask, what is real food? Where is it coming from? Who can afford it? And, which carrot is vegetarian?

Certainly, the '60s generation didn't invent vegetarianism. It took off in the '70s and '80s because of its newly recognized cachet of healthfulness and the newly appreciated ecological benefits of eating lower on the food chain. These are still valid reasons to eat vegetarian. Vegetarian popularity is due for an upswing. It depends a lot on us. How do we present our cause? By serving as walking proof that vegetarian eating is satisfying. Do we believe and show that it's delicious, pretty, easy, cheap, healthful, fun, and kind to animals and that it saves the rainforest? What's not to like?

JIM ROSEN

Founder, Fantastic World Foods

Today, the idea of eating vegetarian foods in the U.S. is much more common and acceptable to the general public than 25 years ago. In the '70s and '80s, it was a foreign idea to most people. Waiters in restaurants made funny faces when quizzed about ingredients. My children, who grew up as vegetarians, were teased in school. Today, they are respected for being vegetarian. Doctors in general did not advise their patients to avoid meat. Today, practically every doctor recommends cutting back. Twenty-five years ago, there were only a few companies like Fantastic Foods producing vegetarian foods, and the products were sold only in health foods stores. Today, vegetarian products are produced by large companies and comprise one of the fastest growing categories in supermarkets.

Vegetarianism is a trend as opposed to a fad. While the number of true vegetarians is increasing slowly, a rapidly growing segment of consumers chooses to eat vegetarian meals on a regular basis. Meat consumption is down. Today, there is an animal protein glut in this country. Mad cow disease, cancer, arteriolosclerosis, mercury poisoning in fish, etc., have scared people into eating 'more vegetarian.'

In the future, our society (and others) will move to a more vegetarian diet. There are three good reasons why a person chooses to be a vegetarian: compassion/ spiritual, health, and environment. In the first category, the number of people who really feel empathy for the suffering of animals is very small today; however, as we evolve into a more aware and enlightened state of mind, the numbers will grow. Second, the aging of the population is making us more aware of the effect of diet on our health. Though this group generally will not become pure vegetarians, they will eat less animal protein. Finally, with respect to the environment, it appears that, as a society, we are about to become very 'green.' Author Thomas Friedman recently wrote that 'green' is the next red, white, and blue. Over the next few years, we will see a powerful environmental movement. As it takes shape, it will be hard to ignore all the evidence that switching to a vegetarian diet could be the most environmentally responsible thing a person could do. One day eating meat will be seen as decadent, cruel, and irresponsible. Twenty-five years from now, I believe that vegetarianism will be the rule rather than the exception.

WILLIAM SHURTLFFF

Author of The Book of Tofu

Over the past 25 years, the first big change for vegetarianism is that, today, it is acknowledged that a balanced vegetarian diet is actually healthier than the standard American diet. That's a huge change! The question is, what brought about this great change? I think there are three or four major influences. The biggest influence is the Adventist Health Study, which is a health study that has been running since the 1950s of 50,000 Seventh-day Adventists in California compared with 50,000 non-Seventh-day Adventists. That has led to more than 200 publications in the medical literature. That's something that has never ever happened in the history of vegetarianism before--people can look at numbers published by doctors and see that people who are vegetarian are having dramatically lower rates of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity--and more. So that study, which surprisingly is not very well-known among vegetarians, I think has been the biggest influence and the biggest change in the past 25 years.

The second influence is the consensus that cholesterol and saturated fat are major causes of heart disease. This consensus did not exist before the late 1980s. The consensus had been building since the 1950s, and once that consensus happened, many physicians looked at their heart disease patients (of which there are many) and then knew what to say to these people. Many doctors began to say, "You should cut back on your consumption of meat and saturated fat." And just at that point, meat alternatives began taking off as a category.

The third reason I think health care professionals have changed their attitudes so much is the influence of vegetarian physicians and nutritionists. The ones that come to mind first are Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Dean Ornish, and Dr. John McDougall. Not least are the people of The Vegetarian Resource Group, who have been present at one nutrition conference after another for so many years. This is where nutritionists and dietitians meet and ask for information. So, The Vegetarian Resource Group has really done a wonderful job working over many, many years, and I think many people have changed their view based on that type of outreach.

The second big change for vegetarianism that I see is the way that ordinary Americans view a vegetarian diet, which is increasingly positive. Twenty-five years ago, believe it or not, most Americans were trying to increase their consumption of meat. That was seen as a sign of affluence. Today, many Americans are trying to reduce their consumption of meat, especially those who are better educated. People are increasingly realizing that meat is not good for you. And not only that, they recognize other things about meat, such as the way that it gets to your table, what it does to the environment--subjects that were never even talked about before. Another thing that's quite remarkable is that 17 percent of Americans say they are vegetarians. That means that, first of all, they wouldn't say that if they were thinking that wasn't a cool thing to be, and secondly, even though they are not all vegetarians, it's really nice to have that many people thinking of themselves as vegetarians. It would be nicer if they were really vegetarians, but the fact that so many people say that is a huge change in attitude toward vegetarianism.

Big change number three is how much easier it is for a person to become a vegetarian than it was back then. First, there are all kinds of wonderful meat and dairy alternatives for people who want to take that route. For an awful lot of adults, it's much easier to make a transition to a vegetarian diet if everything kind of looks the same as it did before on their plates. Secondly, there is loads of information--recipes and books about vegetarianism.

The next big change is that I think the number of vegetarian menus that are offered in colleges, universities, restaurants, and so forth has gone way up. You can basically go anywhere now and there will be a vegetarian item on the menu, unless it's a very swanky type of restaurant. A few years ago, I remember going to Yosemite and sitting down at the main eating place and seeing the first item on the menu was a veggie burger. That's amazing.

Another big change is the huge increase in the awareness of animal rights and animal welfare that so many people in America have brought about. That will ultimately translate into the way people eat, although it doesn't seem to be doing it that much just yet.

Finally, there has been the huge increase in the number of vegetarian periodicals and their readership. This, in my opinion, is a double-edged sword. The one edge is that you get these glossy, slick publications out there on newsstands in front of the public. But to do that, you have to change the message from the traditional message to what I would call a one-dimensional message. It's necessary to do that so big advertisers will advertise in those magazines. They want a magazine that Kraft will have no objection to at all. And you do that by having pretty pictures of recipes all through the magazine. When the first post-war American vegetarian periodical was published--Vegetarian Times--it was a rich tapestry of everything about vegetarianism. In other words, it did not present vegetarianism as a diet, which is the way these modern magazines present it. It presented it as a lifestyle.

ANDY BERLINER

Co-Founder of Amy's

Twenty-five years ago, as a consequence of my herbal tea company, Magic Mountain Teas, I was traveling a lot. It was very difficult to find vegetarian food. Generally, you could order a baked potato and a salad or find a place that had a salad bar. When you ate with business people at that time and you were a vegetarian, it was considered very odd. The perception of vegetarians was that they were hippies or health nuts. It was not a concept that was understandable to people.

But I did learn what it was like to be vegetarian on the road, which was quite different from being vegetarian at home. I would pack peanut butter, jelly, and rolls in my suitcase, and when I dipped down low, I would find a little health foods store and keep a little food on ice in the hotel. It was hard. It was really hard.

Now vegetarianism is much more accepted. A lot of people eat less meat. Many people align eating more vegetables with eating healthier--not being vegetarian for moral reasons necessarily but eating much healthier. We always serve vegetarian meals at company events, and we used to get a lot of flack about it. Now, it's just fine. Just in the 18 years that we've had Amy's, there has been a huge shift in the perception of vegetarianism and also in the number of people who are eating vegetarian meals. I think a lot of this has to do with the aging population; people are more concerned about their health and they are finding that a vegetarian diet can be more healthful and lower in fat and cholesterol. The various diseases that have happened over the years, like mad cow disease in Europe, and all of the seafood that has been found containing toxins has put a pale on some people's appetites for meat. It's a gradual transition.

It is an evolution of more focus on health, more focus on the environment, on animals--a lot more than when I was growing up. More people are becoming aware of it--not just from a health perspective but also from a moral perspective. I think vegetarianism will just keep growing and growing, not at an enormous rate but at a good, steady pace.

RACHEL BERLINER

Co-Founder of Amy's

I've been a vegetarian since 1969. I was a teenager living in southern California, and there was a vegetarian crusader who would take a little lamb and stand outside restaurants with lamb on the menu and try to let people know when they came out that was what they were eating. I was 15 at the time, and I never really realized what I was eating. My father was a vegetarian, and I thought it was the oddest thing--I'd look at his plate and there would be a vegetable and a big hole where the meat was supposed to be. But I never really understood what meat was; once I realized that I was eating an animal, then that was it. I didn't eat meat again.

I remember hearing about veganism when we first started Amy's. Vegans would write to us saying that they wanted us to offer vegan foods (because we used dairy in our products). At that time, the options for vegan food were not good. Veganism just wasn't considered 'a healthy way' in the '70s, and now it is. I think that shows a lot of understanding of how to eat correctly. Vegetarianism used to be a negative thing; now it is considered a positive thing with many people. You will hear a lot of people say, "Oh, vegetarianism! I wish I could be a vegetarian; it sounds like a good thing to do."

Today, there are more options. Previously, everyone's perception of vegetarianism was just a boiled vegetable and a salad or baked potato. Now, people travel around the world and have become more global, and there are so many vegetarian options that are delicious that come from Mexico and India and Thailand. People are realizing that there is a lot of delicious food that is made without meat.

INGRID NEWKIRK 

Co-Founder and President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)

Cranks! That was the name of the London restaurant for vegetarians and our family's steamed 'Christmas puddings,' which contained a lucky coin and were made with fat from unlucky cows. We were a rare breed, walking our lonely walk through meaty and milky supermarket aisles, having 'given up' the foods we were raised on, whether steak and kidney pie and roast beef or hot dogs and hamburgers. "How bizarre!" said a waitress, when I explained my dietary preference.

Today, there are veggie burgers in every 'fish and chip' shop in England and vegan cuisine on the menu at Brown's and other lah-di-da places to eat, and there is not only vegan Christmas pudding but vegan haggis (blood sausage) and vegan 'caviar.' My local southern Virginia grocery has shelves creaking with soymilk, and there are faux chicken nuggets in the freezer case. We want for no sensation that our tastebuds once knew but our intellect and hearts rejected. The medical profession, writers, and even most of the carcass-crunching masses realize now that we vegans have not 'given up' anything except a bigger chance of experiencing heart disease and stroke.

I can't wait to read what we'll say in 25 more years! I see vegetarian ideals permeating the Muslim world via small beginnings such as the website <www.islamic concerns.com>, warning labels on meat and milk, the end of government subsidies for poisonous meat and dairy products, physicians telling patients (as they do now with smoking) to stay off animal protein, and new vegan adults, born of their enlightenment from growing up in vegan households and veganized school lunch lines.

Thanks to VRG's work and that of so many individuals who care about animals, human health, and more, being a daily ambassador for vegan living is no longer hard, pioneering work--it is a pleasant duty. Happy Anniversary, you wonderful people!

TOM REGAN

Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, North Carolina State University.

His most recent book is Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights.

My wife, Nancy, and I became vegetarians over 30 years ago. At the time, we didn't have any friends who were vegetarians. In fact, we didn't even know any vegetarians. Given our circumstances, we felt like we were absolutely alone. It was several years before we began to make contact with other like-minded people.

Eating out was a challenge. There weren't any upscale restaurants that served vegetarian dishes. They thought a vegetarian dinner was a slab of steak, a baked potato, and a tossed salad, only hold the steak. And even though Nancy and I were no longer youngsters, her parents and mine both thought that by not eating meat we were doing something dangerous and unhealthy.

Compare these snapshots from our past with the way things are today. Take the Triangle Vegetarian Society, for example, a vibrant, growing voice for vegetarianism in the area where we live. For several years, TVS has sponsored an annual Thanksgiving banquet. Attendance has grown from 20 or so to upwards of 300. In the past, vegetarians were limited to two or three tables. Now, we require a whole restaurant, for the whole day. As for the food, it is 100 percent vegan gourmet, consisting of so many tastes and textures, colors, and aromas that mere words cannot do it justice. Oh, and did I mention? It's healthy, too.

So, yes, we have seen many changes, and many of them for the good. As for the future, Nancy and I believe that change will continue to be the order of the day. While health and environmental considerations will move some people to adopt a vegetarian way of life, the core concept--the one that will play the greatest role in fostering the growth of what we believe in--is respect for animals. There are many efforts underway, and more to come, aimed at improving the living conditions of farmed animals to make their life more 'natural.' This includes providing them with less crowded, more 'humane' daily environments in which to live. We have no doubt that many of these initiatives will succeed. Paradoxically, though, the more 'natural,' the more 'humane' their living conditions become, the more acceptable eating animal flesh is likely to be in the minds of many consumers. This is the greatest challenge we vegetarians face in the years ahead, which is why our central message must always be the same: we don't show respect for animals by eating their corpses, no matter how 'natural' or 'humane' the treatment they have received.

MICHAEL JACOBSON

Co-Founder of Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI)

Back in the early 1980s, I think vegetarianism was considered a stupid, bizarre diet. There was probably some begrudging acknowledgment that vegetarian diets were healthy, but those acknowledgements were accompanied by copious possibilities of nutrient deficiencies. The nutrition community was constantly trying to find fault, saying you could just eat soda and Twinkles and you'd be a vegetarian.

It's quite amazing to read articles in the journals of the American Dietetic Association that really acknowledge the mental benefits of a healthy vegetarian diet, and the dietary guidelines for Americans emphasize eating more vegetables and whole grains, even more than eating lean meats and fat-free dairy products. I think that those kinds of publications reflect a major change in the way vegetarianism is viewed by the establishment.

I think the weight of opinion is acknowledging the benefits of a more vegetarian diet. When you look at the American Heart Association's and the American Cancer Society's recommendations, they are very much in line with the dietary guidelines for Americans. It is curious that one of the contrary forces, to some extent, really encouraging the consumption of animal products is the sustainable agriculture movement, where anything produced by a local sustainable farm is good. They do not recognize that meat, even if grass-fed, is likely to increase cancer risk, and dairy products certainly increase heart disease risk.

Ideally, in the future, people will be eating a more vegetarian diet, and the animal products that are eaten will be produced on sustainable farms with the animals treated humanely. Americans aren't all going to eat a vegetarian or vegan diet ever, so we should encourage a more sensible way to produce animal products.

NANCI ALEXANDER

Founder of Sublime Restaurant and the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida

In Florida, about 20 years ago, it was difficult to find a tiny store (large walk-in closet-sized) that had some organic vegetables and grains in bins, a single refrigerated unit, and maybe a frozen unit. Most were not very appealing. Usually, a bulletin board could be found in the store. Then, about 15 years ago, a large store called called the Unicorn Village and Marketplace was opened in Aventura, Florida. The owner sold it to Whole Foods and, five years later, became my original partner at Sublime. Vegan restaurants started appearing on the scene in Florida about 12 years ago. These restaurants had a seating capacity of about 30.

In 2003, Sublime, a vegan restaurant, was opened in Ft. Lauderdale. Sublime seats 175 people.

I think, in 25 years, we should see quick-service vegetarian restaurants, like McDonald's. Meat analogs have come to resemble animal products, leaving people little reason to eat animal flesh.

Heather Gorn is an under graduate at the University of Pennsylvania and a longtime volunteer with The VRG.

She also wrote the 'Vegetarian Action' article about Bill Shurtleff the appears on page 35 of this issue.