In the past 10 years, the number of vegans in the UK has increased by an overwhelming 360%, with some 542,000 people aged over 15 following a solely plant-based diet.

Veganism is such a force for good that it’s nigh-on impossible to knock it.

But you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s a relatively new internet-born ‘trend’.

After all, wellness Instagram is awash with vegan bloggers and influencers offering new ultra-millennial recipes, ways of getting protein and vegan clothing stash.

Most of them, however, are white. And it’d be a safe bet to reckon that they’re pretty comfortably off too.

That’s the wellness industry for you; rebranding old ideas for the mainstream and accidentally whitewashing in the process.

Let’s look at yoga for a second.

Think of a yogi these days and you’d probably conjure up an image of a slim, tanned, Caucasian woman with beach hair standing in some mad position she learnt at a retreat in Bali. She’s probably a vegan too, natch.

While the exact origins of yoga are contentious, some believe that its beginnings track back as far as 3300BCE in South Asia. It forms an essential part of Hinduism (Hatha Yoga was founded by Hindu Indian Madasiddhas), Buddhism and Jainism.

It was only in the late 19th century, after many hundreds of years, that yoga gurus introduced yoga to the West and we all jumped aboard the vinyasa flow. The term ‘yoga’ comes from the root ‘yui’, meaning ‘to add or ‘to attach’ in Sanskrit. And yet the yogi community we hear about is quite a pale, privileged one.

Like veganism.

The term ‘vegan’ was coined in 1944 by Donald Watson (a Yorkshireman), the founder of the Vegan Society.

And while plant-based living only became a proper movement in the UK and US in the 19th century, veganism and vegetarianism can trace its roots back to the Indus valley civilisation in 3300-1300 BCE in Ancient India – the same as yoga.

The earliest known vegan is thought to have been the Arab poet Al-Ma’arri (973-1057AD) who apparently argued that if humans deserve justice, animals do too.

Since then, veganism and vegetarianism have gone on to dominate Hindu, Buddhist and Jain culture.

‘I definitely think some of veganism has gone the way of yoga,’ Nurul Shamir, a North London-based vegan of 18 months tells Metro.co.uk.

‘I think a lot of the issues come from non-vegans sometimes, thinking that veganism is elitist and exclusionary when in fact, its roots are in the poorest communities from all over the world.’

In the West Indies, the Nyabinghi Mansion of Rastafari follows Ital – a culinary movement that dictates followers only eat unmodified food grown from the earth around them.

The name’s derived from ‘vital’ and the primary goal of the Ital diet is to increase Livity, or life energy. That means putting substances to increase our energy, not diminish it.

That means generally avoiding chemically altered foods – preservatives, salt and often animal products. After all, meat is dead and therefore works against the Levity elevation. Many also believe it to be unnatural to eat dairy (too true!).

There is any number of famous black vegans.

Erykah Badu, Vanessa Williams, Andre 3000, John Salley and Salim Stoudamire are just a few of the actors, singers and athletes who subscribe to plant-based living.

In fact, in 2015, Aph Ko set up a list of 100 black vegans in a bid to fight the movement’s whitewashed image.

‘When you say “vegan”, a lot of people tend to only think of PETA, which doesn’t reflect the massive landscape of vegan activism,’ she tells the New York Times.

‘The black vegan movement is one of the most diverse, decolonial, complex and creative movements.’

So many people wanted to be included in the list that she had to set up an entire website – Black Vegans Rock.

While Black Americans might be the leading consumers of meat in the US, there are also black specific groups in the USA which purposely swerve animal products, such as the Nation of Islam.

Elijah Muhammad wrote two books back in 1967 and 1972 on how to eat to live.

‘We are, by nature, vegetable and fruit-eating people. Do not be a meat consumer. Be a vegetarian. This is the best menu for our health. Eating any kind of flash is not good for us, not even beef…Before the making of the white man, the Black Man did not each animal flesh.

‘After the removal of the white man, there will be no more eating of this type of meat. There will be a complete stoppage and practice of the eating of land flesh regardless of whether it is animal, beast of fowl. The people will live a thousand years without eating them.’

Whether you believe that white dudes are responsible for the Afro American community’s current consumption of animals or not, it’s interesting how linked black liberation is to plant-based living.

The Afro-Vegan Society is a non-profit organisation based in Baltimore, and is a space for people ‘with both a shared history of race-based oppression and the current experience of racial inequality’.

‘On the surface, Afro-Veganism seems as if it would be a natural progression for black people living in a white-supremacist society,’ they say.

‘As a group of people who have historically suffered under the burden of structural oppression, it stands to reason that we would have an aversion to oppressive systems of any kind and empathy for the victims of those systems. Since veganism is a lifestyle that rejects one of the most violently oppressive systems on the planet – the commodification and exploitation of animals’ bodies – it makes sense that black people would adopt this lifestyle out of an unwillingness to participate in such a blatantly violent and exploitative system.’

They suggest that the acceptance of animals’ lower status in society has been used as a tool of oppression against black people throughout American history – from enslavement to the media’s animalistic language around black people today.

‘The animalization of black people has been used to perpetuate the myth of the “savage” and “uncivilized” blacks in order to justify atrocities committed against us. It’s no wonder so many black people have opted out of adopting a lifestyle that centres the very animals that have been used to degrade and devalue us.;

Veganism has been a moral, spiritual, physical and tool for radical liberation for many people of colour for many years.

And yet, we hear nothing about it and many people of colour feel that wellness veganism is completely inaccessible. They don’t have the means, the body, the taste to comply with what’s become a pretty narrow community in the mainstream.

As vegans, we need to make a conscious effort to make sure we’re being as racially inclusive as possible – and demand that wellness industry, which is trying to take advantage of the green pound (dollar/euro…whatever) makes an effort too.

Back to Nurul again: ‘I’d like veganism to be more inclusive but I think it’s a difficult road – in terms of both the very white vegan spaces that already exist, but in our own communities too’.

‘Despite being south Indian and our traditional diet being mainly vegetarian historically, my grandparents weren’t very happy about me going vegan, they said we “weren’t poor anymore and we can eat meat whenever we want”.

‘I do think it would help a lot for vegan chefs and personalities to engage not just with vegan POC chefs etc, but non-vegan ones when it comes to recipes and cooking techniques, and by more aware and educated about the diverse range of food cultures, to do our recipes and ingredients justice.

‘If I have to see another recipe for bad curry or a terrible dahl, I might cry!’

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