Jack Norris RD:

Northwest VEG is excited to have Jack Norris presenting our program following the Eastside Vegan Potluck on Sunday, March 16 at the Stone Tower Adventist Church, 3010 NE Holladay Street. Jack will present “Nutrition Tips for Vegans” at 6:15pm, following the Northwest VEG potluck at 5pm. Here is his backstory.

Jack Norris, registered dietitian, co-author of Vegan for Life, co-founder and Executive Director of Vegan Outreach, and the main author on VeganHealth.org, first really pondered humans’ relationship to other animals while a freshman in high school. His father took him on a fishing trip — an experience he found to be very disturbing as he wanted to keep the fish alive — not harm them. He learned from PETA literature about the horrible conditions under which animals were raised and slaughtered for food, but his high school health teacher had told him that people needed to drink milk for health and for strong bones. It wasn’t until a chiropractor told him he could get plenty of calcium from leafy greens that he finally felt he could go vegan in June 1988, and he hasn’t looked back. John Robbins’ Diet for a New America was also a major influence on Jack.

In 1993 he and some others co-founded Vegan Outreach. Some of their first activities involved standing by major highways with large banners reading “Stop Eating Animals” — something that he later came to believe was not very effective as well as being very boring. Vegan Outreach then began producing pamphlets and little booklets such as the Why Vegan booklet that Northwest VEG still uses. Jack spent a couple of years touring colleges and distributing literature, but as the organization grew, they were able to hire people to go out and distribute their literature on college campuses. At its height, Vegan Outreach was handing out more than a million booklets at over one thousand colleges each semester. Eventually though, Vegan Outreach decided that rather than just giving out information, it would be better to get people more involved, so they switched their focus to getting college students to sign up for their 10 Weeks to Vegan program. It is mainly an email program but has a companion Facebook group where Vegan Outreach can provide more support.

But then the pandemic hit, and they had to move everything online. However, they found that Facebook and Instagram ads were hugely successful at getting people to sign up for the 10 Weeks to Vegan program. Currently they are having between 4,000 and 5,000 people signing up for the program each week. They now carry out this program in 53 countries and many languages, with the programs individualized for each country.

Back in the 1990’s though, Jack would occasionally hear from people who would tell him that they had tried moving to a vegetarian or vegan diet, but didn’t feel healthy, so they went back to eating meat. This inspired Jack to go back to college and get a dietetics degree and then set up the website VeganHealth.org starting more than 25 years ago. The site is now loaded with articles on each individual nutrient, nutrition for people in different life stages, information on laboratory tests for vegans, and vegan nutrition books. Jack’s presentation to Northwest VEG on March 16 will borrow heavily from this information.

Jack will be doing his presentation to Northwest VEG live, but remotely via Zoom. We will project him and his presentation on a large screen, and have a camera on the room to provide direct two-way communication for Q&A. For people who would like to attend but cannot make it to the Stone Tower Church on March 16, you can join the Zoom presentation online at 6:15pm at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85715667850. You will be in listen-only mode for most of the presentation, but can submit questions via the chat and we may bring you online for your Q&A question at the end.

This is a presentation you don’t want to miss!