NOTE FROM THE COORDINATORS
A WEEKEND OF COAST-TO-COAST VEGAN OUTREACH
At the time of writing this piece, we just exhibited at Natural Products Expo East, the main trade show for the natural foods industry. It was gratifying to learn from several supermarket dietitians visiting our booth that they use our Guide to Food Ingredients. Kudos to Jeanne Yacoubou, who researches ingredients for us throughout the year, as well as Heather Gorn, who posts this information to our Facebook, Twitter, and blog. Thank you to Priscilla, whose language skills helped us talk with Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese-speaking visitors. And thank you to Chris who used his Spanish and Hindi to speak with businesspeople from Latin America and India. We especially enjoyed connecting entrepreneurs producing new vegan foods with marketers and venture capitalists who may be able to help them. And our editor Samantha will be reporting on some of the new vegan products she found.
The same weekend we were at Natural Products Expo East, our volunteers had outreach booths for The Vegetarian Resource Group in San Francisco, California; Richmond, Virginia; and Washington, D.C. Thank you to everyone who donated their time. Phil Becker, who has volunteered for us for more than 30 years, said of the San Francisco Vegetarian Society Festival, this year people buying books "was a personal record for me as a VRG volunteer at this event." Thank you to vegan registered dietitian Mark Rifkin, who was swamped with questions at the D.C. VegFest. He answered inquiries ranging from raising vegan kids to how to lose weight. And thank you to Elsa Spencer, PhD (nutrition), who along with her children volunteered at the Richmond Vegetarian Festival. She said there were so many questions at our booth about vegetarian diets, Paleo diets, vegan protein sources, and on and on.
Vegans and vegetarians are such a varied audience. In this issue we have an article on cooking with chocolate and a piece for those who want to cook with no added oil, sugar, or salt. An especially enjoyable task last year was judging our video contest. The students did such a great job. See page 21 and http://www.vrg.org/veg_videos.php. We are looking for sponsors to continue this video contest. Let us know if you're interested.
Thank you so much to all our donors and volunteers who enable us to carry out our varied outreach. We appreciate your support of a more ethical world for future generations.
Debra Wasserman & Charles Stahler
Coordinators of The Vegetarian Resource Group
