Being Black and vegan used to get you side-eye at the cookout. Now there are Black vegan festivals, cookbooks, restaurants and creators everywhere you look. But how many of us actually eat this way, and why? The honest answer is more interesting than the meme.

Black and vegan: what the numbers actually say

You have probably seen the claim that Black Americans are two or three times more likely to be vegan. It traces back to a 2016 Pew Research Center survey. When the research group Faunalytics dug into Pew’s raw data, it found the popular “8% of Black Americans” figure came from just 130 Black respondents, of whom 4 said they were strict vegans or vegetarians. Pew told Faunalytics the figure was never in its report because the sample was too small to be reliable.

So what do sturdier polls show?

• 2022, YouGov for the Vegetarian Resource Group: 9% of Black respondents were vegetarian (including vegans) and 4% were vegan, compared with 6% and 3% of all U.S. adults. Black respondents were also more likely than white respondents to always or usually eat vegan meals (13% vs. 7%).
• 2019, Gallup: 31% of nonwhite Americans said they had eaten less meat in the past year, compared with 19% of white Americans. Health was the top reason people gave.
• 2023, Gallup: 5% of people of color and 4% of white adults identified as vegetarian, and Gallup said it did not find the racial differences it had seen in some earlier surveys.

The takeaway: strict vegans are a small slice of every group, and the numbers bounce around from poll to poll. The bigger and steadier story is flexible, plant-forward eating, where Black Americans have been at or near the front for years.

The roots run deeper than a trend

Plant-heavy eating is not new to Black kitchens. Soul food historian Adrian Miller has pointed out that for many enslaved people, the diet “was really just eating a lot of vegetables” grown, foraged and stretched with small amounts of meat. Greens, field peas, sweet potatoes and cornbread carried the week. The big meat plates were for Sundays and celebrations.

From there, a modern tradition grew:

• Dick Gregory. The comedian and civil rights activist went vegetarian in 1965, tying his diet to the nonviolence of the movement. His cookbook with nutritionist Dr. Alvenia Fulton, Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat, framed healthy food as part of Black liberation.
• Black Panther era food justice. The Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Children program treated feeding kids as a political act, and it helped build public pressure for school breakfast nationwide.
• Rastafari Ital food. Ital cooking, from the word “vital,” centers natural foods from the earth, and many Rastafari eat vegetarian or fully plant-based.
• Soul Vegetarian. Members of the African Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem opened Atlanta’s Soul Vegetarian in 1979. The West End location, a landmark since 1982, closed on July 12, 2026 after 47 years, citing building repairs and slower business. Soul Vegetarian No. 2 in Poncey-Highland continues under separate ownership, and Soul Veg City still serves Chicago’s South Side.
• Queen Afua. The Brooklyn wellness teacher’s book Heal Thyself brought plant-based eating to a generation of Black women and artists. Some of her cleansing and fasting practices go beyond what research supports, so treat those parts with care.

The threads connect. Public health nutritionist Tracye McQuirter first heard Dick Gregory speak as a college student, went vegan, and later wrote By Any Greens Necessary. She now leads 10 Million Black Vegan Women. Here she is in conversation with Baltimore organizer Brenda Sanders on the Afro-Vegan Society channel.

Watch: Tracye McQuirter of 10 Million Black Vegan Women on Food & Justice w/ Brenda Sanders from Afro-Vegan Society

The health picture, without the hype

Health is the reason most people give for eating less meat, and the disparities are real:

• 59.6% of non-Hispanic Black adults have high blood pressure, compared with 44.8% of non-Hispanic white adults, according to the CDC. Black adults also had the lowest control rate among those on treatment, at 31.8%.
• In 2022, Black Americans were 35% more likely than the U.S. population overall to die from heart and blood vessel disease, per the HHS Office of Minority Health.
• Black adults were 24% more likely to have diabetes in 2024 and died from it 78% more often in 2022 than the U.S. population overall.

Can plants close that gap? Here is where it pays to be careful. The Jackson Heart Study, which followed 3,635 Black adults in Mississippi, found no link between overall plant-based diet scores and heart disease or death. The researchers suspect diet quality was low across the whole group. But each additional serving of legumes was linked to a 41% lower risk of cardiovascular disease, an association worth noting but not proof on its own.

That is the lesson: the word “vegan” on a label does not protect your heart. Beans, greens, whole grains and less salt do the work. Fries and fake-meat sandwiches every day do not. If you are managing blood pressure or diabetes, talk with your doctor or a registered dietitian before big changes, especially since your medication may need adjusting as your numbers improve.

The culture now

Today’s scene treats plant-based eating as culture, not deprivation.

• Bryant Terry, author of Afro-Vegan, Vegetable Kingdom and Black Food, has his own publishing imprint, 4 Color Books, and has moved into gallery art. Watch his conversation with Touré at the top of this page, from DCP Entertainment.
• Black VegFest, founded by Omowale Adewale and Nadia Muyeeb-Adewale, held its 2026 festival on August 8 in Brooklyn’s Lincoln Terrace Park under the theme of food sovereignty and farmland equity. The couple also farm through Liberation Farm in New York.
• Brenda Sanders co-founded Baltimore’s Vegan SoulFest with Naijha Wright-Brown and runs the Afro-Vegan Society.
• Jasmine Leyva made The Invisible Vegan, a documentary about Black plant-based eating and the history behind what lands on our plates.

The business side is tough. Slutty Vegan founder Pinky Cole went through a public bankruptcy reorganization earlier this year, and Soul Vegetarian’s West End closing shows even legends need steady customers. If you want these spaces to last, spend money there. Our roundup of Black business wins and how to support them is a good place to start.

The real challenges, and how people handle them

Nobody serious says this is easy for everyone. The common hurdles:

• Food apartheid. Farmer and activist Karen Washington prefers this term over “food desert” because the lack of fresh groceries in many Black neighborhoods comes from race and economics, not nature.
• Cost. Dried beans, rice, lentils, frozen vegetables and cabbage are among the cheapest foods in the store. The expensive part is packaged meat substitutes and eating out.
• The family table. Food is love, and turning down Grandma’s greens can feel like turning down Grandma.

People who make it work tend to do a few things. They bring a dish to share instead of explaining their plate. They start with a few meals a week. They cook the flavors they grew up on, like smoked paprika in the greens. And they find community, from local potlucks to creators online. Our list of Black YouTube creators to watch can help you build your feed.

Jasmine Leyva takes on the question plenty of Black folks still ask in this talk from Switch4Good.

Watch: Is Veganism Just Some White People’s Stuff? with Jasmine Leyva from Switch4Good

Here is the bottom line. Black plant-based eating is not a trend borrowed from somewhere else. It is a practice with its own history, heroes and flavor. Whether you go fully vegan or just make Monday a beans-and-greens night, you are joining a long line of people who saw food as a way to care for themselves and their community.