I recently had an opportunity to speak at WorldFest 2008, Los Angeles’ largest Earth Day celebration.  It is a vegan, solar powered event that promotes sustainable living. Besides nonprofit organizations and conscientious businesses, thousands of citizens attended, enjoying a wide range of plant foods, informative presentations, and wonderful art and music. WorldFest challenges the harmful status quo and points toward a better way.

When it comes to how food is produced and how most people eat in the U.S., “bad has become normal,” and the tragic consequences are becoming more and more apparent.  Billions of animals are brutally slaughtered, and millions of consumers suffer from preventable health problems. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Sometimes people assume certain ailments, allergies for example, are “normal” without realizing that their food (eg. dairy) causes them.  I’ve spoken with individuals who had allergies and routinely took medication to remedy them.  But those ailments, and the need for medication, subsided when they became vegan.  Eating vegan solves many problems at the root.

In 1986, Farm Sanctuary was one of the few places in the U.S. where vegan was “normal”, but thankfully, that is changing.  And although vegans currently represent a very small percentage of the U.S. population (perhaps 1 or 2 percent), there is a burgeoning awareness about the benefits of vegan living, and change is in the air.

Gene