Pork rinds in Tabasco sauce. Cheeseburger pizza. Well-done steak with ketchup.

Cory Booker can’t eat any of these presidential favorites. The U.S. senator from New Jersey, who announced his candidacy for president earlier this month, is a vegan, meaning he doesn’t eat food that’s made of, or from, animals. Meat is off the table, as is anything with milk, cheese, or eggs. So Booker can’t indulge in smoked salt caramels, as Obama did, because they contain milk chocolate. He can’t even eat the jelly beans that Ronald Reagan loved because they’re made with gelatin, which includes animal collagen.

Booker is looking to make history with his 2020 bid. America has never elected a vegetarian president before, much less a vegan. Before Booker, a vegetarian had never even been elected to the Senate before. (He says he switched fully to veganism on Election Day 2014.) There appears to be just one self-identified vegan in the House of Representatives—California Congressman Adam Schiff—and only a handful of vegetarians.*

Some might argue that there’s a dearth of plant-eaters in public office because there aren’t that many in the U.S. overall. Around 8 percent of Americans identify as strict vegan or strict vegetarian, a figure that has remained steady for the last two decades. But that’s still about 26 million people who have barely had any representation in Washington. Their numbers are similar to other chronically underrepresented identity groups. LGBTQ Americans make up only 4.5 percent of the population. Black and Hispanic Americans make up about 13 and 18 percent, respectively.

The political and cultural forces that privilege white, straight, Christian men in the halls of power are well known. But why do voters consistently put meat-eaters in the White House? How hard would the meat industry—and meat-lovers—fight to keep that in place? Booker’s candidacy provides a unique opportunity to find out.