Vegans and Vegetarians educate and showcase plant-based lifestyle and cuisine at 'Georgia VegFest'

December 2nd, 2022

'Georgia VegFest' takes place in Duluth at the Gas South Convention Center on Dec. 4. (Courtesy of Nick Levine Photography)

According to the organization Alliance for Science, one in ten Americans say they do not consume meat. The lifestyle change has been increasingly popular in recent years, especially since the release of pro-vegan documentaries such as “What the Health” and “Cowspiracy.” This Sunday, you can learn more about vegetarianism and veganism at the Georgia VegFest at the Gas South Convention Center in Duluth. To talk more about this celebration of all things plant-based, “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes was joined via Zoom by Helene Greenberg, founder and executive director of Triangle Vegfest, one of the festival’s producers.

Interview highlights:

On the factors influencing more movement toward plant-based diets:

“Probably the driving force for people to make a change is that they go to the doctor and their cholesterol’s high. They have a heart attack. Their parents or friends or family have a heart attack, and it leads them on a path of the internet, Googling, ‘What can you do when you have these symptoms, or these things happen to you?’ Cancer; the top things that happen to people that are caused by, primarily, diet,” said Greenberg.

She added, “Then there’s the animals and the planet. When people see how their food is produced, a lot of times they can’t unsee it, and for some people, they make the transition into veganism because they don’t like the cruelty to animals and how the the animals are being; I can’t even say ‘raised,’ because factory farming isn’t raising animals. Because they don’t live long enough to be raised, and then the absolutely horrific deaths that they have from being in factory farming. And then the planet – all you have to do is look around and read the room to realize that the planet is getting destroyed, and the number one reason the planet is going to be destroyed is animal [agriculture].”

On festival sponsor Farm of the Free Animal Sanctuary:

“I like to pick sanctuaries in the cities or states that we’re in to bring attention to who they are, and it’s not that Georgia doesn’t have more than one – it’s that we’re close with Farm of the Free and, I want people to know who they are and how they can donate to them… and help them with the animals that they have in their care,” said Greenberg. “It’s important that people recognize that there’s more to donate to than just dogs and cats, and that the cows and the pigs and the chickens and the ducks and the geese and the sheep and the goats all run into issues with having homes and getting out of horrible situations where they can go to sanctuary.”

Other eating and learning opportunities to look forward to:

“We have 12 educators on Dec. 4, where you can sit and learn from doctors and athletes and people in the animal rights industry… If you just hung out and listened to the educators all day and then ate some food while you’re sitting there, you’d leave knowing so much more than what you came into… It won’t look any different from pretty much any other place you’ve gone to that has vendors and live music and food trucks, except that no animals were harmed in the making of the festival, because it’s all vegan.”

“We started the year in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I heard a little story afterwards that there was this person eating ‘Oh My Cod Vegan Seafood’… and he had his food and he was eating, and he said out loud, ‘What kind of fish is this?’ To which somebody who was sitting close by said, ‘That’s not fish, that’s vegan,’ and the person said, ‘What? This is vegan? This isn’t fish?’ and completely surprised, because he liked it and had no idea that he wasn’t eating an actual fish. So ‘Oh My Cod Vegan Seafood’, they’ll be in Georgia; they’re a food truck. They have lobster mac and cheese, they have fried fish, they have fried shrimp. I just saw the plate on Sunday; they have a buffalo shrimp plate salad thing that somebody ordered and went by my nose, and I was like, ‘That looks really good.'”

Georgia VegFest takes place in Duluth at the Gas South Convention Center on Dec. 4. Tickets and more information are available at https://georgiavegfest.com/