Black communities are leading a vegan revolution. Food insecurity and systemic obstacles still stand in their way.

From insider.com

• Reports have shown Black Americans are more likely to adopt vegan diets.
• Plant-based options, independent from modern trends, have been a part of Black American culture for generations.
• Accessibility, cost, and education still remain obstacles in aiding in major health disparities across the nation.

When Brenda Sanders founded the Afro-Vegan Society in 2016, she felt her mission was promoting a choice between life or death. As a space for Black people to convene over their unique experience with veganism, it also revealed the dire health status of so many Americans.

"There's no way to even deny at this point that all of these completely preventable diseases that are still so prevalent in our community are not diet-related," Baltimore-native Sanders told Insider. "It's a matter of life and death for marginalized communities, especially Black and Brown folks."

Sanders echoes a bleak statistic: on average, the life expectancy of Black Americans is 6 years lower than the overall population. With heart disease as the most common cause of death, poor diet and healthy food inaccessibility has had a detrimental impact for decades.

Despite pressing health concerns, reports have shown that Black people are leading the numbers in vegan and plant-based eating. In the past 10 years, reports have shown that Black Americans were nearly three times more likely to follow a vegan diet. In 2021, a Gallup poll reported that 31% of non-white respondents cut back on their meat consumption within the year prior compared to 19% of white respondents. And a 2015 survey conducted by the Vegetarian Resource Group found that 8% of Black Americans reported never eating meat, fish, or poultry, compared to 3.4% of the overall population.

Rooted in history

Advocates and Black vegans themselves are not surprised by these numbers. As a counter narrative to exclusive, coastal, and expensive options at retailers like Whole Foods or Erewhon, veganism and plant-based options have been ingrained in predominantly Black communities for much of the 20th century and beyond.

"When I was introduced to veganism and plant-based eating 25 years ago, it was through Black people who had opened up a health food store/cafe back in the early seventies," Sanders recalls. "And if you go around the country, there were these little out of the way, tucked-into-the-corner-of-the-hood spots that were serving plant-based food."

The roots of Black veganism and vegetarianism go through many subcultures of Black America and the diaspora: from Rastafarianism, the Nation of Islam, and early hip-hop culture. Plant-based cuisine, existing for centuries before modern "vegan" nomenclature, have been reintroduced and reinvented within Black American culture for quite some time.

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Fighting food insecurity

While Black communities are no cultural stranger to plant-based or vegan options, accessibility is the primary obstacle to impacting community health. Post-pandemic, the nation is facing one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the past 25 years. 

According to the Harvard University Social Policy Data Lab, 1 in 6 Americans are struggling to eat meals daily with Black communities being twice as likely to experience food insecurity. On top of that, a history of geographic and urban planning has left large portions of the American South without easy access to food at all.

Dr. Amie Breeze Harper, author of "Sistah Vegan: Black Women Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health and Society," purports that a laundry list of systemic tactics have led to the inaccessibility of healthy food options, including the "racial wealth gap, poor transportation infrastructure" and targeted marketing that excludes the majority of the nation. 

"Systemic racism has made phenomena such as food apartheid a major impediment to achieving access to any type of holistic and culturally appropriate dietary practice, which includes veganism," Dr. Harper said. "Food apartheid tends to affect Black and Brown communities the most, if we are talking about racialized minorities in the USA."

Food apartheid

A food desert, also as referred to as "food apartheid," is defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as "large proportions of households with low incomes, inadequate access to transportation, and a limited number of food retailers providing fresh produce and healthy groceries for affordable prices." To qualify technically as a food desert, at least a third of the population must live more than 1 mile from a supermarket in an urban environment or 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas. According to the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility, 21% of Black Americans reside in a food desert. 

But the solution isn't as simple as erecting more supermarkets or groceries stores. Accessibility serves as the first behemoth for increasing nutritional value — reshaping demand and reducing costs follows directly behind as nutrient-rich food can cost ten times more than "junk food," not including the increasing wealth gap or price inflation. 

"Sometimes you build the supermarkets and people don't come," Sanders explained. "And then it becomes 'well they had a grocery store there and people didn't support it so it shut down.' But how much did you reach out to the community? Did you do a cooking demo to the community? We got to get education there, too."

The power of social media

To bridge the knowledge gap, Black vegans are taking to social media to provide guides and recipes on how to prepare fresh foods once they're in the hands of those who need it. Collectively, vegan chefs and influencers alike have amassed millions of followers connected to vegan and plant-based cooking. 

"I have seen how specifically Black communities, for example, are using the internet and social media to advocate for, and promote, their vegan food options and businesses in a way that didn't exist even 15 years ago," Dr. Harper said.  "I think of how Tabitha Brown, Brenda Sanders, Tracye McQuirter, Kai Nortey, and Badass Vegan have used cyber technology to create a more diverse way to narrate and promote veganism."

Celebrities have also advocated for veganism. In 2019, Beyoncé and Jay-Z offered fans the chance to win tickets to their concerts for life if they incorporated more plant-based meals into their diets. Venus Williams has spoken about how a raw plant-based diet helped her manage an autoimmune disease.

The deeply-rooted cultural significance of plant-based and vegan alternatives remains the key to the often overlooked popularity within Black communities. Dissecting it from continued trends and promoting its connection to issues related to individual well being, environmental health, and generational community development remains at the core of the Afro-Vegan Society's mission. 

"We must divorce the idea of plant-based alternatives from trends, from the idea that it has to be expensive, or that it somehow runs counter to our culture," Afro-Vegan Society founder Sanders said. "There are so many different problems that can start to be addressed by this one change.

https://www.insider.com/black-americans-vegan-diets-food-deserts-2023-2