Note From the Coordinators
Numbers Count
According to The Vegetarian Resource Group 2019 Harris Poll, 20% of U.S. adults always or sometimes eat vegan meals when eating out. This many Americans consuming vegan meals sometimes or all the time is an amazing change from when earlier surveys indicated 1% of the population said they were vegetarian and still included people who ate meat. Back then, almost nobody knew what the word vegan meant and you had to order powdered soymilk through the mail, as it wasn’t available in supermarkets.
These changes happened because of innumerable activists, writers, eccentrics, health educators, businesspeople, consumers, loud mouths, quiet individuals, teachers, artists, leaders, followers, parents, religious adherents, health professionals, and others. We always tell our interns that everyone has different roles, each choice can be okay, and you have to figure out what makes sense for you.
Nonprofit groups always have unlimited projects they want to take on. People have countless valuable suggestions. What is really accomplished depends on what individuals actually support and commit themselves to do. Thank you so much to the following who have given us help recently. (There were others of course). Debra gave a presentation at a conference to professors and preceptors training future dietitians. Reed Mangels PhD, RD, created several handouts and content for this talk.
We had more than 270 applications for our 2019 college scholarship contest. Thank you to all our essay readers and judges who allowed us to give personal responses. Winners will be highlighted in the next Vegetarian Journal issue. Thank you to the donors who make these scholarships possible. (Note: More than three students deserve to win; it would be wonderful if others would financially support some entrants to become VRG interns with a stipend or receive runner-up prizes.)
Health Educator Marcy Schveibinz has been giving vegan cooking classes for a residential program that houses formerly homeless men. Thank you to Marcy for training VRG interns to be able to give similar classes. Also, we appreciate Marcy teaching a Jewish vegan cooking class at a Baltimore synagogue, resulting in a vegan Passover article in the Jewish Times.
Congratulations to our volunteer Whitney, who now has vegan twins, and continues to put together our national monthly VRG-News email newsletter. Kudos to Jason, our computer guru, who is solving ongoing questions and glitches, often on weekends or late at night. And thanks to Rissa Miller for the beautiful design work in this issue and Suzanne Hengen for doing the nutritional analyses.
Debra Wasserman & Charles Stahler
Coordinators of The Vegetarian Resource Group
