(Was) World's Oldest Vegan Regarding Veganism: "It's All There in the Bible"

Loreen Dinwiddie, passed away at age 109 in September 2012. She had been vegan since 1922. Ms. Dinwiddie lived in my town in Portland.


She credits her vegan diet, which she started in 1922 with her husband, for her longevity.

Loreen, a Seventh-Day Adventist, says she draws her diet from biblical teachings. She says: "It's all there in the Bible.”

If someone would have asked me who I would want to meet back then if I could meet anyone, I would have said, Loreen Dinwiddle.

Here she is--looking great at 108!

New Vegan-Friendly Cafe: The Ark

A new church-run restaurant offers mostly vegan fare as a healthy alternative in a low-income neighborhood.

Seventh-day Adventists opened The Ark in a former Pizza Hut earlier this year. Adventists established meatless restaurants as early as the late 19th century in a bid to encourage healthy living.

For Adventists, who believe discipleship involves care for the body as well as the soul, meatless restaurants provide vehicles to bless the world. They also enable new friendships to take root as diners, wait staff and cooks share common passions. 

The Ark’s main purpose is to promote good health and the happiness that comes from feeling healthy. The Ark offers midday meals six days a week and dinner two nights a week.

After lunch on weekdays, tables are routinely folded up and chairs reconfigured for free workshops on health-related topics such as therapeutic massage, hydrotherapy, smoking cessation and vegan cooking. Eating meat taxes the environment far more than a plant-based diet does.

Some patrons of The Ark are now rethinking how they relate to the natural world and other creatures--even if they are not signing on to Adventism, which encourages but does not require a meatless diet. For those seeking spiritual connections, Adventists are glad to share about their faith, but only if restaurant customers ask about it.

Outside of lunch hours, tables are sometimes cleared to make room for worship, Bible study or a prophecy seminar. But if all people do at The Ark is eat lunch, that’s quite alright.

Click The Ark to get to their website.

Why I Believe Jesus was a Vegan

Religion may be about having faith, but sensible faith is based on some logic and common sense and this will help show that Jesus must have been vegan:

1. Jesus preached compassion, love and kindness to all. He is quoted many, many times regarding this. I doubt if such a man with His morals and ethics would then go and eat animal flesh.

2. As with John the Baptist being commonly mistaken to have eaten locusts and honey, there most likely was confusion in using the word “fish” or “meat” in the bible. There’s a longstanding confusion in the etymological origin of the word locust. Locust is both a bean from the carob plant and an insect. The Greek word for cakes or bread made from the flour of the carob bean is ‘egkrides’ and the Greek word for locust the insect is ‘akrides’. The insect locust is approved to be clean for consumption in Leviticus. It was a delicacy in those days and was mostly consumed by the upper and/or priestly class.

John the Baptist belonged to a group of ascetics who believed in repentance and in leading an austere lifestyle. The carob bean was seen as the diet of the lower class who normally endured hardship and exploitation from the priestly class. So most likely John the Baptist ate locust plant seed from the carob tree.

Also, regarding honey, it could be anything from saps of certain trees to juice of the crushed dates. Carob flour and crushed dates made a good damper or sweet rustic cake, hence the word ‘egkrides’ in the Greek version of the Bible.

Some Church Fathers circa 400AD put forth an injunction to change the word ‘egkrides’ in the Bible meaning cakes to ‘akrides’ the insect locust, not realising that locust the insect was a delicacy enjoyed by the priestly upper crust, from whom John the Baptist and people like John distanced themselves from.

Words in the Bible have been known to be erroneously translated.

3. The Bible isn’t the only source that mentions Jesus’ life. Check out the book, The Gospel of the Nazirenes, edited and restored with historical documentation by Alan Wauters and Rick Van Wyhe. This book tells us that Jesus did not eat animals, and it also details the accuracy of their scripture in the beginning of the book. I believe this version of the New Testament because it agrees with Jesus’ nature of being non-violent.

4. Jesus was a known rebel during His time on earth. He, many times, did not go along with what people often did, hence what was one of the reasons why He was persecuted.....It makes sense that one of the things He rebelled against was eating animal flesh because, as I mentioned earlier, Jesus was a very moral and ethical person.

For further studies, check out the book, The Lord Christ Was a Vegan, by Saba, that I mentioned in a previous blogpost.

Did John the Baptist Really Eat Locusts and Wild Honey?

There's a longstanding confusion in the etymological origin of the word locust. Locust is both a bean from the carob plant and an insect. The Greek word for cakes or bread made from the flour of the carob bean is 'egkrides' and the Greek word for locust the insect is 'akrides'. The insect locust is approved to be clean for consumption in Leviticus. It was a delicacy in those days and was mostly consumed by the upper and/or priestly class.

John the Baptist belonged to a group of ascetics who believed in repentance and in leading an austere lifestyle. The carob bean was seen as the diet of the lower class who normally endured hardship and exploitation from the priestly class. So most likely John the Baptist ate locust plant seed from the carob tree.

Also, regarding honey, it could be anything from saps of certain trees to juice of the crushed dates. Carob flour and crushed dates made a good damper or sweet rustic cake, hence the word 'egkrides' in the Greek version of the Bible.

Some Church Fathers circa 400AD put forth an injunction to change the word 'egkrides' in the Bible meaning cakes to 'akrides' the insect locust, not realising that locust the insect was a delicacy enjoyed by the priestly upper crust, from whom John the Baptist and people like John distanced themselves from.

Ten Talents

As I mention great gifts for holiday shopping, I want to mention Ten Talents cookbook, which is my favorite all-around book of all time. Just to let you know, Ten Talents is not a vegan cookbook; it does have some recipes with honey, but that's it regarding animal ingredients.


Frank and Rosalie Hurd's Ten Talents is a classic natural foods vegetarian/vegan health manual emphasizing God's Original Diet for man, from the Garden of Eden as found in the Bible--Genesis 1:29.


A pioneer veg*n best-seller, Ten Talents was first published in 1968, when the term vegan was virtually unknown in the US. This book of 675 pages has over 1,000 healthy recipes, including 21 informative chapters on foods, and in proper combination for fantastic health and nutrition. It has a natural foods and appliance glossary, information on baby feeding with recipes, recipes using vegetables, legumes,  breads, desserts, fruits & fruit salads, grains, herbs & seasonings, meatless main dishes, nuts, seeds, olives, vegetable salads, salad dressings & dips, sandwiches & spreads, sauces, creams & gravies, soups & stews, sprouting, vegetables & side dishes, meal planning & menus, canning, freezing & drying, dairy & cheese substitutes, beverages, a section for those on a transition diet, and a chapter on the 10 healthy lifestyle principals for abundant health.

Compiled from the storehouse of real foods without the use of refined sugars, harmful additives, and animal/dairy products (except honey, which can be easily substituted by using other sweeteners the book mentions).

Ten Talents stays updated (the current book edition was published in April 2, 2012). It is also beautifully and artistically illustrated with more than 1,300 color photographs.

It makes a fabulous all-in-one veg*n cookbook!