ORGANIZATION DESCRIPTION: Vegan Ingenuity is a nonprofit organization that creates innovative ways to help people go vegan. Last year, founder, best-selling author, and vegan educator Tracye McQuirter, MPH, launched 10,000 Black Vegan Women — an online initiative to help 10,000 black women go vegan to help change the health paradigm of black women for good. More than 15,000 women, and counting, have signed up for the program. This year, we’re building on the growth experienced in 2020 and expanding our efforts on a much larger scale to reach many more women. (More information can be found at b ..read more

Here’s an excerpt from my Vegan Nutrition Boot Camp Series about acid-forming and alkaline-forming foods and why it’s important to know the difference. Our bodies have a natural pH, which stands for “power of hydrogen” or “potential of hydrogen,” that denotes the level of acidity and alkalinity of our bodily fluids. We want our bodies to be alkaline, not acidic. Why is this important? It’s important because if our bodily fluids become too acidic, we will be at increased risk for disease. The pH of our fluids affects every cell in our bodies. When our bodies remain in a constant state of acidos ..read more

The holidays are here, so I’m sharing some recipes ideas for healthy and delish vegan holiday meals. I always recommend whole food plant-based meals because they’re the most nutritious foods to eat.    The photo above is what vegan holiday meals have looked like for my family, whether it’s a full-on feast or a simple celebration. All the recipes are from my books, Ageless Vegan and By Any Greens Necessary. I’ve listed the recipe suggestions, below. From Ageless Vegan: Vegetable Pot Pie Stuffed Orange and Red Bell Peppers String Beans with Shiitake Mushrooms a ..read more

Here’s everything you need to know about exactly what we’ll be doing in the 10,000 Black Vegan Women 21-Day Vegan Fresh Start program: + The 21-Day Vegan Fresh Start will take place online October 5-25. +You’ll be part of a community of 10,000 black women going vegan together to get healthy, feel great, and support each other along the way. + On the first day, you’ll get a link to download an all-new 21-Day Fresh Start Guidebook.  + The Guidebook includes preparation guidance, nutrition 101, meal plans, recipes, grocery lists, and meal prep tips for the 21 days. +  ..read more

Today I went to see the beautiful new Ida B. Wells photo mosaic exhibition, which is made up of thousands of photos of people involved in the movements for women’s right to vote. The exhibition will be at Union Station in Washington, DC, through this Saturday, and is also an interactive online website. Ida B. Wells is my all-time shero. A groundbreaking investigative journalist, anti-lynching crusader, pioneering suffragist, radical activist, and now posthumous Pulitzer Prize winner, she was truly ahead of her time. (If you don’t know her full story, I highly encourage you ..read more

I’m thrilled to be a new great aunt! My oldest niece just had a beautiful baby boy. He’s the first boy in three generations in our family, so let’s just say he’s going to be a little bit spoiled – in a good way, of course! And my great nephew’s birth got me to thinking about a question I get asked quite a bit: Is it healthy to raise children vegan? The answer is yes – as many lifelong vegans can attest. And here’s what Dr. Ruby Thomas, MD, a board-certified pediatrician based in Atlanta, who raised her own children vegan, has to say. This is an excerpt from our free African American Vegan Sta ..read more

Nicola Kagoro, a.k.a. Chef Cola, is a pioneering Zimbabwean vegan chef and founder of Back to Black Roots and African Vegan on a Budget, which promote healthy and affordable plant-based foods. One of Chef Cola’s primary goals is to spread awareness of the beauty of plant-based African vegan culture and cuisine by giving people the information and resources they need to actively integrate plant-based eating into their lifestyles.  I recently interviewed Chef Cola to find out how she went vegan, to learn more about her incredible work with the Akashinga women anti-poaching rangers in Zimbab ..read more

I’ll never forget the time we told Grandma that we couldn’t eat her food anymore. It was 33 years ago, and my mom, sister, and I were new vegans. We used to have Sunday dinners at my grandmother’s apartment and she was the best. cook. ever. We lived for Grandma’s fried chicken, homemade biscuits, macaroni and cheese, pound cake and apple pie. But when we went vegan, we had to break the news to Grandma (my dad’s mom) that we couldn’t eat her food anymore. When we told her, she looked at us indignantly and said “Oh, ya’ll done got sanctified!” Then she turned to my mother in disbelief. “And Mary ..read more

I’ve been teaching people how to go vegan for 30 years and I absolutely love it! And over the years, I’ve noticed a few common things that can trip people up as they transition to veganism. So here they are, along with how to avoid them. 1. Feeling Pain Instead of Joy When people think about going vegan, they often focus on how hard they think it will be. They focus on the foods they’ll be giving up, instead of all the new foods they’ll be adding on. They worry about being different than their family and friends, instead of the beauty of their own personal transformation. In other words, they ..read more

Unless a packaged food product has the word “Vegan” on the label, the best way to know if it’s vegan is to check the ingredients list. Even when the label says “Plant-Based,” it’s best to check the ingredients list because, technically, plant-based doesn’t necessarily mean plant-exclusive. And as a general rule, products with the labels “Meat-Free” or “Dairy-Free” aren’t necessarily vegan, because they can still contain other animal-based ingredients. The obvious animal-based ingredients to look for are beef, chicken, fish, turkey, pork, duck, lamb, and other animals, as well as milk, cheese ..read more