Another inspiration that has influenced my journey towards a more plant-based diet is the hippie movement. I was introduced to this movement through my grandmother. My grandmother had always been free-spirited with a desire to experience life fully. She participated in activities that would qualify as hippie-inspired, such as going to music festivals, dressing colorfully, and traveling aboard. One major factor that many hippies identified themselves with was their diets.
When the hippie movement developed around the 1960’s, it was highly impacted by a diet created by a man named George Ohsawa. This diet had roots in spiritually and the concept of the forces of ying and yang. It was about creating a balance from within the body. The types of food it concentrated on were local, seasonal, and organically produced food. People who followed the hippie movement became a counterculture of their own that still are affecting the world around them today (Philpott).…show more content… Much of the hippie-food, or natural food movement was reinvented by young people around their 20’s who experimented with dishes while on travels because it was cheap. Air travel changed the 60’s and as a result the food changed with it. Youngsters on their trips would create cultural mish-mashes to season and flavor food. This is in part why stir fry is considered a classic staple in a hippie’s cookbook. After the discovery of how important fiber is in the late 1970’s, more people viewed this diet as healthy and the trend caught on even more. Millennials have been inspired by this style of eating and it has caught on again in recent years
