It’s New Year’s Day 2050, 7:55 AM…the usual daily bugle call to colors from the loud speaker at our local Naval nuclear submarine base is now silent. The base was closed.
A butterfly passes by as I sip on my coffee in the morning sunshine by the pool. I’m reviewing all the glorious vegan recipes and food photos that are set to be published in my local grocer’s newsletter.
People are celebrating plant-based foods and the world is humming with the healing energy that was manifested into being by dedicated activists that served on the front lines of a food revolution for many years.
They said my generation would not live as long as their parents. That worried me, and I saw a lot of my friends and family die young from diseases brought on by the Standard American Diet. Thankfully, I went vegan early enough to endure the challenges of our times. Today, I am a survivor and I’m enjoying life like I never could have imagined.
It was no simple job creating change. It truly felt like being on the front lines of a food revolution. Thankfully, I had my father to look to for courage. Before passing away at 91 years old, my father and I talked in depth about the need for reform in our food system. He was the wind beneath my wings. He believed in my vision of a plant-based world and he knew I could help make a difference. My father was a descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Nelson Jr., the Governor of Virginia, 1776. My father told me he knew I had what it took to go forward and help the country “Declare Independence from Animal Agriculture.”
And we did it! Better than the 4th of July fireworks and celebrations….we now also celebrate January 1st, 2027 as the Day of Independence from Animal Agriculture.
It was a hell of a battle to create change. The social and psychological brainwashing people had become victim to were difficult to overcome. It was like awakening an angry giant, who wanted to continue sleeping. But we chipped away at it and never stopped until the giant did awaken.
My top three targets for creating change where K-12 education, chef training programs, and our health care system.
It took over a decade to influence change in K-12 education. The United States Department of Agriculture School Nutrition Guidelines (that supported the meat and dairy industries) were a constant barrier to change. Schools could discriminate against plant-based foods educators and prevented them from being hired for not agreeing to include meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy in their curriculum. Schools silenced and banned any student or parent who challenged meat and dairy. They did not want students to be informed consumers and took great lengths to hide, conceal, and deceive students into believing that eating animals was healthy, normal, and good nutrition….all while the world was on fire with climate change and a health care crisis. Students were too smart to let the deception continue, they were hungry for the truth, they were ready to be the SOLUTIONS GENERATION…and they did it! Our K-12 students from Vegan Clubs at schools everywhere. They produced video programming in their digital media classes with peer to peer food news programming. They crafted recipes and school cookbooks to share with their community, they hosted school wide assemblies promoting plant-based living. They did it. The SOLUTIONS GENERATION, they helped lift this humanity from the dark ages of dependence on animals as a food source to independence from animal agriculture and created a wide open field of opportunity in food and lifestyle innovation.
Then there were the chefs. Menus are a reflection of a chef’s training and in the early days it was all about consuming animals and seafood. I tried to crack into teaching in a culinary arts program in the early years and found huge interest with students, but hard resistance from academic administrators. They too were puppets of the USDA Dietary Guidelines and anyone who did not align with the status quo was an outsider and unfit for employment. So to overcome the status quo, repeated efforts were made to petition academic leaders to create a new track of study for chefs that focused on plant-based foods. After years of rejection I found a way to lift up my local college and label them a hero for helping to create change.
I was a plant-based foods educator but needed digital media skills to write and publish a cookbook.
I went back to the local community college that had hired me as an adjunct faculty member in the culinary arts program, then”let me go for being vegan.” I enrolled in their Digital Media program. I took every course and managed to make college headlines with my story.
After that, it took a few years but I published a cookbook that engaged chefs in learning about the incredible versatility of soy….Black Belt in TOFU: Today’s Plant-Based, Protein-Rich Alternative to Meat, Seafood, Eggs, and Dairy.
That book helped open doors to chef training programs everywhere. The book included knowledege and skills challenges with exams and culinary competitions. Chefs and home cooks could study to earn a White Belt in Tofu Basics that includes the history of soy, how tofu is made, soy myth busters, identifying different types of tofu and tofu butchery. The challenges continue with a Red Belt in Meat Alternatives, Turquoise Belt in Seafood Alternatives, Yellow Belt in Egg Alternatives, Blue Belt in Dairy Alternatives, and finally a Black Belt in TOFU with Culinary Games, Competitions, and a Final Exam. The book opened incredible doors of opportunity to help the world transition from growing soy to feed animals (and aquaculture fish) to growing the soy, making it organic, and feeding the people. It was a low-hanging fruit of opportunity for change, and now grocery store shelves are filled with organic soy-based staple foods that have replaced meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy.
In the old days the vegan section in our grocery stores was just a few square feet. But the big change started in the dairy section. Gallons of cows milk were replaced with plant-based milks, meat sections continued adding plant-based meat alternatives and tofu in every variety imaginable. There are still small amounts of animal products available for sale but they come with enormous warning labels, they are highly taxed, and are locked up like cigarettes and require assistance from a customer service to access them.
My dream has come true. Today, I can walk through the grocery store and see abundant organic plant-based foods. Restaurants have flipped their menus, where they used to be animal centric, today chefs are are trained in plant-based foods and animal foods are as taboo as smoking in public.
My life’s purpose is complete. It was a horrendous job serving on the front lines of a food revolution but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. BLISS has arrived.
God bless our children and all living beings forever more.
Liz Gary
www.veganculinarymemoirs.com