 Here's the surprisingly black history of veganism. If your only mental picture of veganism is white ladies and little lemon knocking back shots of wheatgrass, then you're way off. In fact, you may be surprised to find out that this new veganism trend is actually not that new. And it's not all that white either. In fact, veganism can be traced back over 2,000 years to the ancient cultures in India, the Mediterranean basin and drum roll please, Africa. Now, when it comes to a lot of traditional black American cuisine, you wouldn't be wrong to say that it features, well, a lot of meat. But this hasn't always been the case. There's always been like this river of African Americans who've been pioneers in the vegan movement. Originally, there were plants and people were eating plants. I mean, that's the natural thing for us to eat. That's what we gravitated towards. That's what looked good to us. That's what our bodies were made to eat. So this is just nothing new. But this vegan tradition changed when European adventurers, aka colonizers, introduced more commercial farming methods, which produced a lot more animals, but also fewer indigenous crops. So the veganism of today is actually more of a nod to the traditions of Africa rather than a recent phenomenon. Now, while the vegans of yesteryear were largely driven out of necessity, these days folks from all backgrounds are going vegan for a whole host of practical, personal, and philosophical reasons. And thanks to Google, there's a whole smorgasbord of information to back these reasons up, like the study from the American Society of Animal Science that calls out how bad livestock production is for the planet. Turns out that 2.8 gigatons of toxic gas from cow boo boo isn't all that great for the environment or the recent study from the American Heart Association that details the benefits of a plant-based diet. But if you still think the veganism is more for Becky than for B, here's another study for you. It's been reported that black people are more than twice as likely to be vegan than the average US citizen. Guess the proverbial cookout is about to get a whole lot greener. I never, ever, ever thought that I would be a vegan. My sophomore year Dick Gregory came to campus and they talked about the plate of Black America and how unhelpfully most folks eat and why we should become vegetarians. That talk literally rocked my entire world. Within a year I was a vegetarian and within a year and a half I went vegan. I started out as an anti-racist activist and it wasn't until I started reading some more like animal rights scholarship that I thought like well how do actual animals factor into this racial conversation? And so a lot of black veganism is not just about black people eating like kale or whatever, it's talking about the world, talking about oppression in a totally different way and re-envisioning a more liberatory world, taking into account animal experiences as well. There are no shortage of prominent black vegans either. As the game changers like Colin Kaepernick, Taraji P. Henson, Erica Badu, Jay-Z and Asa Frocki. Dang that's a whole lot of rappers. Well that's no coincidence. Hip-hop and veganism lately are going together like Kanye and a muted color palette. In fact plants are so hot right now there's even a rapper who goes by the name of Casey Veggies and he's not vegan but he likes big beach and he care lot life. Okay that was bad and there you have it folks veganism is for everyone. Thank you so much for watching. If you like what you saw go ahead and give this video a thumbs up and for more from attention click that subscribe button.