Bryant Terry is an African Americanvegan chef, food justice activist, and author. His most recent book is Vegetable Kingdom: the Abundant World of Vegan Recipes, which was published in 2020.
In 2001, Terry founded b-healthy!, a five-year initiative created to raise awareness about food justice issues and empower youth to be active in creating a more just and sustainable food system. In 2002 he received a Community Fellowship from the Open Society Institute to support b-healthy's work, in which he led chef-educators Ludie Minaya, Elizabeth Johnson, and Latham Thomas in reaching out to thousands of youth in the United States. In the spring of 2003, Terry met author Anna Lappé. That fall they began writing a Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, which was soon bought by Tarcher/Penguin and published in 2006. Grub received a 2007 Nautilus Book Award for Social Change. Among his national radio and television appearances, Terry has offered his commentary on the Sundance Channel's original seriesBig Ideas for a Small Planet. He has been a guest chef on three episodes of the BET series My Two Cents. Terry was also a host on the PBS series The Endless Feast. Terry is a consultant for the Bioneers Conference. He has helped raise funds for the People's Grocery in West Oakland, and he consults for other not-for-profit organizations as well as corporations. He appeared on the "Nourish: Food + Community" PBS special that aired in 2008, and he has also served on the advisory board for the project's educational component. From 2008 to 2010, Terry was a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a national program of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. In 2015, Terry was named the inaugural Chef-in-Residence for the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco.
Writing and speaking engagements
Terry's writing and recipes have been featured in Gourmet, Food and Wine, The New York Times Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Vibe, Domino, Mothering, Food and Wine, Plenty, Delicious Living, and other print magazines. He has contributed to ABC.com and TheRoot.com among others. His column on TheRoot.com, "Eco-Soul Kitchen", offers thoughts, recipes, tools, and tips for sustainable eating and living. His essay, "Reclaiming True Grits", was widely circulated on the web and sparked heated debate about "soul food". Distinguishing traditional soul food the "instant soul food" that began emerging in the late 1960s, Terry wrote, "Sadly, over the past four decades most of us have forgotten that what many African Americans in the South ate for dinner just two generations ago was diverse, creative, and a lot of fresh, local, and homegrown nutrient-dense food." In 2015, Terry gave a talk at the annual TEDMED conference on "Stirring up political change from the kitchen".
