“To associate veganism and vegetarianism with whiteness, you’re totally discounting our [Black] cultural heritage,” says psyche Williams-Forson, a food scholar at the University of Maryland, in a 2019 documentary about Black veganism.

This association is valid due to mainstream veganism revolving around white culture. A white British man named Donald Watson is considered the ‘father of veganism’ after he coined the term in 1994 to separate vegetarians who ate animal products, from those who did not. Watson later founded the Vegan Society which helped solidify veganism's place as a lifestyle. However, the truth is that a lifestyle that excludes the consumption and use of nonhuman animal products has been part of ideologies and traditions of BIPOC for centuries prior, if not longer.

Histories of veganism among BIPOC

Veganism can be traced back to 3300 - 1300 BCE, as a form of abstinence that is rooted in belief systems centered around reverence and nonviolence towards animals by Eastern religions like Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism.

It is believed indentured people of Indian origin that were taken to the Caribbean by colonisers inspired the diet of Jamaicans through their Hindu traditions. Ital, a cruelty-free unprocessed plant-based diet, was later developed in the 1930s by Jamaicans and is a vital part of Rastafarianism.

In the late 19th century, the Black Hebrew Israelite community was established. They believe that the secret to an eternal life is through a strict vegan diet.

What about veganism in Africa? 

In essence, the staple precolonial African diet was vegan. Livestock was an asset, and would be bartered or used for labour. Meat eating was reserved for ceremonies such as weddings, funerals, births, and spiritual rituals.

The main meal of the day would usually be lunch. Lunch consisted of vegetables or legumes, which were used to make a stew, soup, or sauce. This would be served with porridge or mash, usually made from a root vegetable or a grain.

Regional differences would be reflected in the contents of the stew, soup, or sauce. For example, in coastal areas or fertile highlands, the stew would have a variety of ingredients due to the landscape. Furthermore, depending on the local trade histories of the region, the stew would have different flavouring or spiciness.

We explore the different diets and foods across the continent: 

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North Africa
The border of North Africa close to the Mediterranean sea is compromised of Muslim countries. The diet reflects Islam traditions which involves the eschewing of pork and the consumption of Halal animal products. 

Their diet, which is based on grains, is built on staples such as flatbread and couscous.

Foods they eat include:

1) Vegetables like okra, meloukhia, and radishes.

2) Legumes such as broad beans, lentils, and black-eyed peas.

3) Fruits like oranges, pears, and mandrakes.

The foundation of their meals are built with olive oil, onions, and garlic. Lamb is also the meat they largely consume in tajines or as a kebab.

West Africa
Yam is the main crop in West Africa; it is served pounded (amala) or with a melon sauce (egwansi).

Portuguese colonists came with cassava from Brazil. Boiled and pounded into pure starch, cassava is also a West African staple. 

Along the coast from Côte d’Ivoire to Nigeria and Cameroon, yam and cassava are the primary variety of root crops. In regions from Mauritania to Liberia, and across the Sahel, rice is predominant. In the Sahara, couscous is prevalent.

West African stews usually include okra, beans, sweet potato leaves, or cassava. In the southern and eastern regions of Gambia, palm oil is the base of the stew. In the Sahel, groundnut paste is the main ingredient of the stew.

Foods they eat include:

1) Vegetables like eggplant, cabbage, carrots, lettuce, and french beans.

2) Fruits such as plantains, bananas, guava, melons, jackfruit, mangoes, and pineapples. 

Sheep, goat, and chicken are commonly eaten, while beef is reserved for special occasions. Pork eating is localized to non-Muslim areas. Bush meat such as bush rats, large herbivores rodents, monkeys, and antelopes are also eaten, and giant snails are a delicacy.

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East Africa
East African cuisine is unique due to extensive trade and the migration of people from Arabic and South Asian countries. 

The staples in this region are matake (smashed plantains), ugali (maize meal cooked into a thick porridge), potatoes and rice. In Somalia and Ethiopia, teff is the staple grain, and it is used to prepare injera. Moreover, in these countries stews are remarkably spicy due to the significant use of chilli and garlic. Outside Kenya and the horn of Africa, stews are not usually as spicy. Coastal East African regions have spicy, coconut based stews.

Beef, goat, sheep, and chicken are widely eaten. Herding tribes, such as the Maasai, do not eat meat (except for special occasions) but rely on fresh soured milk and butter as their staples. 

Southern Africa
The staple in this region is a cornmeal dish, known as pap or maize meal.  Rice is also a widely eaten grain, while bread is served as an accompaniment to almost any meal.

Foods they eat include:

1) Vegetables like corn, squash, and sweet potato.

2) Legumes such as rooibos, cowpeas, and beans.

3) Fruits like avocados, grapes, and papayas.

Although meat is used as a complementary source of flavour in other African countries, in South African meals it is the centerpiece.

The correlation between South Africa’s scale of modern day meat eating and their prolonged oppression is interesting to note. This was initially due to British colonists and then from Afrikaaners through the apartheid regime.

Exploring the enforcement of meat eating 

Meat consumption is traced back to the process of colonisation. Patriarchal power in Western society is embodied in the practice of eating meat. (Counihan 1998:4) This message of male dominance is conveyed through meat eating — both in symbolism and in its reality. (Adams 1990:189)

Pre-colonial Africans balanced their consumption of animal products. However, when colonialists altered their cultural norms, eating meat had little to do with diet, and everything to do with dominance. The effects of this ideology have been long lasting. Even today in my African household, I know that the largest piece of meat is reserved for my father, simply because he is “the man of the house.”

In Courtenay’s study (2000:1388), health related behaviours and beliefs such as eating is explored. The study explains that maleness and femaleness in all cultures is associated with specific foods and rules controlling their consumption (Counihan 1998). The eating of meat became intrinsically linked to masculinity. Meat — bulky and tough in its nature — is seen as a source of strength, which reinforces cultural ideas of the stereotypical male body. 

Health care utilisation and positive health beliefs or behaviours are socially constructed as forms of idealised femininity (Courtenay 2000: 1389). This is evident in the mainstream representative form of femininity through the body of a thin, white middle class woman. For she is assumed to eat smaller portions of meat and have the economic resources for larger portions of fresh fruit and vegetables, and vitamins.

The difficult truths about mainstream Veganism 

According to Lupton (2013), sizeism is a cultural construct intended for social control. For a movement seeking to be legitimised in the mainstream, veganism aligned itself with sizeism and has rejected size inclusivity in its attempt to be constructed as symbolically valuable (Julier 2013).

Veganism uses fat-shaming as a means of promoting itself through its promising weight. Furthermore, zoomorphism is used in sizeist terminology to further stigmatise and disenfranchise people with fatter bodies, calling fat people, “pigs”, “cows”,“whales”, and so on. PETA caused controversy in 2009 with their distasteful advert ‘Save the Whales. Lose the Blubber: Go Vegetarian’. 

In fact, research on fat-shaming indicates that it is not an effective mechanism for controlling the eating behaviours of others (Puhl and Heuer 2010). On the contrary, fat-shaming is a systemic and interpersonal tactic used to humiliate, abuse, control, and oppress people, especially girls and women (Royce 2009).

Historically, the West have negatively applied fatness to nonwhite ethnicities and ignored cultural nuance in fat embodiment, as a means to maintain hierarchies of power that privilege them. (Renzaho 2004). So the absence of Black fat vegan people in mainstream culture, specifically women, is not a mistake. This is why chart-topping pop star, self-love advocate, and an all round legend, Lizzo, is shaking the foundation of mainstream veganism with her highly visible big and beautiful Black vegan body.

Veganism is a consumption-focused political protest against systemic discrimination against non-human animals. It only makes sense that it makes space for those that have been systematically discriminated against. Instead of pitting nonhuman bodies against big and Black bodies, veganism should recognise and represent these unifying parallels of societal mistreatment between these groups, in order to create intersectional consciousness and inclusivity.