Dick Gregory: Fasting, Vegetarianism, and the Politics of Food

Dick Gregory’s relationship to food was never just personal “health stuff”—he treated eating (and not eating) as politics, ethics, and strategy. Coming out of deep poverty and hunger in St. Louis, he carried a lifelong awareness that food is power: who has it, who doesn’t, who profits from it, and how bodies get used up by the system. That lens shaped the way he talked about diet in the same breath as civil rights, poverty, war, and state violence.

One turning point was his shift to vegetarianism in the mid-1960s. Gregory framed it as an extension of the Civil Rights Movement’s commitment to nonviolence—expanding the idea beyond human relationships and into how animals are treated. Over time, he became one of the most visible public figures linking Black liberation, ethical eating, and health outcomes, years before “food justice” was common language.

Fasting was the other major piece: Gregory used it as discipline, as a spiritual/physical reset, and—very often—as protest. A dramatic example was his hunger strike while serving time in Washington state; he fasted for weeks and was eventually removed to a hospital as his condition deteriorated. Decades later, he was still using hunger strikes to put moral pressure on public issues, including a 2011 fast protesting the execution of Troy Davis.

He also tried to popularize his ideas through publishing and “how-to” guidance. His best-known food book is Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin’ with Mother Nature (published in the early 1970s), which blended recipes with a worldview: natural foods, vegetarian eating, and discussion of fasting as a tool for weight loss and health. The book’s whole vibe is that diet isn’t merely taste or calories—it’s a daily vote about what kind of society you’re willing to live in.

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