The first-ever Vegan SoulFest drew 71 animal rights groups, public health organizations, food vendors and vegan chefs to the Downtown Cultural Arts Center on Saturday to promote a vegan lifestyle.
Naijha Wright and Brenda Sanders, the event’s organizers, said they were overwhelmed by Saturday’s turnout. Vegan SoulFest, which was initially planned to take place indoors, drew hundreds of attendees and spread outside the building.
“It was supposed to be a small event, but when the message got out there, the momentum was just tremendous,” Wright said.
Attendees of SoulFest came in droves to explore veganism. The event, designed to educate people, was open to vegans and non-vegans alike.
“I’m a vegetarian, but I’ll probably be a vegan in the future, sometime soon. I haven’t made the decision yet to move forward with it,” Kalilah Harried, a Baltimore resident, said. Harried came to the event hoping to learn more about veganism so that she can make an informed decision about whether or not to become a vegan.
“I wanted to see if I could get some samples of the food and just learn more about it in general so when I’m ready to make that decision I know what I’m getting into,” she said.
Harried felt that SoulFest was well-organized and informative. “There [were] a lot of vendors here, whether it was for clothing or food or just for different aspects of the vegan movement,” Harried said.
Wright is a co-owner of The Land of Kush, a vegan and vegetarian restaurant located in Mt. Vernon. She said her passion for veganism was born out of a need to improve her personal health.
"My cholesterol was high when I first moved down to Maryland in 2005. I was going to be prescribed [medications,] and I don’t take [medications]. I’m holistic,” Wright said. “I didn’t know anything about veganism. I just knew I had to do something about my cholesterol.”
In 2006, Wright met Gregory Brown, now head chef and co-owner of The Land of Kush.
“He’s vegan, and he started bringing me all these vegan foods [that] he would make,” Wright said. “He had this idea of opening a vegan restaurant in Baltimore. And I [was] like, ‘Tell me more about it’ because I used do a lot of promoting [and] marketing in New York City. I was like, ‘I can help you.’ As I started learning more and more about the culture and ideas, I started transitioning into the whole vegan lifestyle.”
Ruby Lathon, a featured speaker and vendor at SoulFest, also became a vegan in order to improve her health.
“[In] 2007, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer,” Lathon said. “I started researching how to cure cancer naturally, and I didn’t do any traditional treatments. I only changed my diet to a whole food, plant-based diet. And it’s cured the cancer. I’ve been free of it ever since.”
Lathon has a Ph.D. in engineering but became a holistic nutritionist after her battle with cancer. In 2010, she founded Roadmap to Holistic Health, an organization that specializes in health and wellness consultations, cooking demonstrations, seminars and workshops.
“It became a passion for me to teach people how to alleviate not just cancer but other diseases like diabetes,” she said.
Dr. Milton Mills, another featured speaker at SoulFest, also expressed his passion for helping people improve their health through veganism.
“The reason I actually went to medical school was because I wanted to understand more closely [the] relationship between nutrition and disease and also to help people understand that by changing their diet and their lifestyle they could avoid developing a lot of the chronic diseases that affect Americans,” Mills said.
Mills has found that the vegan lifestyle has dramatic health benefits.
“I’ve had several pa- tients who have diabetes [and] have been able to either come off of medications completely by becoming vegan or reduce the amount of medicines that they take by 80 to 90 percent. It has tremendous effects,” Mills said. “Patients with high blood pressure have been able to come off blood pressure medicines. And there are a number of studies that show that it can actually reverse heart disease, so there’s great potential.”
However, Mills also acknowledged that becoming a vegan can seem daunting to many people.
“People are oftentimes concerned that they won’t like [the vegan diet]. I had that concern when I was thinking about making the change,” Mills said. “I delayed changing my diet for over a year because I was afraid [of missing the non-vegan diet].”
Mills said that once people get over that hurdle of committing to the diet, it’s not hard to stick to. He compares it to starting a new romantic relationship.
“Think about your first girlfriend or boyfriend, the one you thought you couldn’t live without, the one you can’t stand anymore. When you learn to like something else, you like it as much as you did the other thing or even better because you realize it’s better for you,” Mills said.
Mills also noted that people can start following a vegan diet at any age.
“Studies show that well-planned, nutritious vegan diets are more than adequate for raising children,” Mills said. “And I know a number of families who’ve raised their children completely vegan, and not only are they healthier, but studies actually show that the children have higher IQs. So there [are] all kinds of benefits.”
In light of the large turnout at the first Vegan SoulFest, Wright hopes to make the event accessible to even more people in the future.
“We’ve gotten responses from [residents of] Texas and Florida and Chicago. They would like for us to bring something like this to them,” Wright said. “I would say [that will happen] somewhere down the line... in the next five to 10 years because that’s on [another] whole level. If I could get to the [Inner] Harbor, that would be awesome."
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