Alicia Kennedy

A culinary and cultural history of plant-based eating in the United States that delves into the subcultures and politics that have defined alternative food. The vegan diet used to be associated only with eccentric hippies and tofu-loving activists who shop at co-ops and live on compounds. We’ve come a long way since then. Now, fine-dining restaurants like Eleven Madison Park cater to chic upscale clientele with a plant-based menu, and Impossible Whoppers are available at Burger King. But can plant-based food keep its historical anti-capitalist energies if it goes mainstream? And does it need to? In No Meat Required, author Alicia Kennedy chronicles the fascinating history of plant-based eating in the United States, from the early experiments in tempeh production undertaken by the Farm commune in the 70s to the vegan punk cafes and anarchist zines of the 90s to the chefs and food writers seeking to decolonize vegetarian food today. Many people become vegans because they are concerned about the role capitalist food systems play in climate change, inequality, white supremacy, and environmental and cultural degradation. But a world where Walmart sells frozen vegan pizzas and non-dairy pints of ice cream are available at gas stations – raises distinct questions about the meanings and goals of plant-based eating. Kennedy—a vegetarian, former vegan, and once-proprietor of a vegan bakery—understands how to present this history with sympathy, knowledge, and humor. No Meat Required brings much-needed depth and context to our understanding of vegan and vegetarian cuisine, and makes a passionate argument for retaining its radical heart.

The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating

No Meat Required

Amelia

To me, eating well, had always been synonymous with eating anything and everything from land and sea. Making this change in my life required not just new restrictions, but finding a new way to create abundance.

Why wouldn't we want to move toward smaller farms and prioritizing local economies? I would prefer to buy my pens from my local pharmacy than order them on Amazon, because one of these contributes to my neighborhood and the other union-busts and underpays its own employees, who've worked hard enough over the years to help the founder Jeff Bezos fly to space for some reason. The same principle stands when it comes to food: Why would I support massive agricultural and biotech conglomerates who underpay workers and also don't pay the real environmental cost of their pesticide-heavy, monocrop practices instead of supporting my local community?

What we’ve gained in better seasoned food, less reliance on brown rice, and please for animal rights we’ve lost in the feeling of doing something against the grain —even if that grain is now heirloom pharaoh

Regardless of how many anarchists reject veganism on philosophical grounds, the grassroots spread of a movement through recipes shows the lifestyle's function as a political tool. For punks, veganism was often the beginning of an inquiry into not just relationships with nonhuman animals and corporate food but the power of community. Zines were integral.

Punk veganism is a politics of hospitality, at its core. rooted in the home and expanding ever outward into cookbooks. restaurants, and cafés that serve food that seeks to nourish, entertain, and maybe — just maybe — get one more person off industrial animal agriculture. 

Now that vegan and vegetarian food has become almost ubiquitous, now that more people understand its diversity and potential as a way of being more environmentally friendly on a daily basis, the movement must grapple with its futureand who owns it, who will steer it. Historically, this has been the realm of counterculture folks- hippies, anarchists, punks, chefs interested in alternatives to animal agriculture. But the world of tech and venture capital is now sinking its proprietary teeth in, and there hasn't been much of a fight against this wave, which suggests the future of food isn't based on what grows and what flows, but on what can be cultivated in a laboratory and make a few people very rich, all under the guise of saving the planet.

Who defines abundance, and for whom: Often, people who think like me—who think that having localized agroecology as the foundation of our food consumption is ideal for the environment, our health our economies, our existence are considered Luddites or otherwiga stuck in the past. It's considered a detriment to really care about how food tastes: this is dismissed as an aesthetic concern. Well, aesthetics matter. Taste matters. Tradition matters. Culture matters. Bones matter, gastronomically and metaphorically. The vegetarian and the vegan: with whom do we align? I know the world I prefer, and it's one where I can have a good-natured ethical argument with someone who cares about their food as much as I do and there are an array of sustainable, ethical, nutritious, accessible choices for those who don't. 

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