Note from the Coordinators
We're Now Vegan Journal
The Vegetarian Resource Group was started about 40 years ago by a vegan medical doctor who was a Holocaust survivor, two vegan activists, a medal-winning vegan Senior Olympics swimmer, and a vegetarian nurse. Thus we always promoted veganism and science. While the word "vegan" wasn't that well known back then, we created Simply Vegan in 1991, which sold over 100,000 copies. At that time, most publishers wouldn't use the word vegan, and told us people weren't interested in simple cooking. Of course that has greatly changed.
Debra did one of the first vegan cooking demos on Good Morning America (preparing a Romanian sweet pasta dish), our Vegan in Volume quantity recipe book was given out to over 10,000 food service staff, we distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of vegan literature, did a vegan ice cream sampling for 4-H students, and much more along the way. Because of our vegan involvement, readers have asked us to change our name.
As the word vegan is more known today than 40 years ago, there is a lot of debate about when to use the word vegan. Many say "plant-based." That expression works sometimes, but we're not thrilled with that term since plant-based isn't always vegetarian or vegan. Also, not all vegan items are plant-based, such as yeast, some foods made in a lab, etc. There is additionally a question of whether vegan candy or other low-nutrient dense items are what people mean by plant-based.
There are many thoughts about using the name vegan or about changing names in general. For example, think of the NAACP's president in 2008 explaining about their internal wrestling about why they still used a name which included an offensive term. We knew an organization that wouldn't allow non-vegans to come to their meetings. As many have seen, vegan has been utilized to criticize others. Since vegan is about creating a better world, veganism should never be used that way. We need to have extreme empathy and understanding for those whose livelihoods are impacted by the increasing changes from an animal-based diet. Even if vegan, we need to be helping everyone, wherever they are. We wouldn't want people to feel that by using the word "vegan" that we are excluding them.
Vegan is about doing the best you can in an imperfect world, and ongoing learning. Not every study will come out in a positive way for vegans from a health or environmental viewpoint. But everyone can be vegan. We see our role as not cherry picking studies to say vegan is best, but explaining information in a vegan context, that can be helpful to vegans, aspiring vegans, and non-vegans. In this spirit, in an evolving world, we are beginning our 40th anniversary year with changing the name of Vegetarian Journal to Vegan Journal. Thank you to Senior Editor Rissa Miller for her work on this evolution and redesign.
Debra Wasserman & Charles Stahler
Coordinators of The Vegetarian Resource Group
