When we think of African-American cooking, what are the first dishes that come to mind? Yams, fried chicken, cornbread, okra, collard greens? Despite what we’ve seen, there is a long and still unearthed cultural history within Black cuisine only at the beginning of its exploration. As we’ve seen from shows like Netflix’s High On The Hog, there is plenty worth discovering when it comes to the nuances of Black dishes. Often rooted in the negative ideology that the majority of Black cuisines cause heart disease, high blood pressure, or obesity, we forget to acknowledge the side of Black cooking that emphasizes leafy greens and farm-to-table meals.
Helping folks rediscover the joys of raw eating is All the Way Live Cafe co-owner Beverly Nedley, a veg enthusiast making the term “plant-based” cool.
Long before opening All the Way Live Cafe back in 2008 alongside her daughter Nyeisha, Beverly was on her own path toward clean eating and proper dieting thanks to Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin’ With Mother Nature. A staple she says in how she changed her eating habits.
“It made me think about a lot of things. My diet was very poor at the time, very heavy in sugar, very heavy in fast food,” Beverly told THE BLOCK. “After I read the book, it shed new light on things for me, and I wanted a transformation in my life.”
She would adapt to the raw food lifestyle over time, even bringing along her two kids, much to the dismay of schools and other parents who criticized Beverly’s lifestyle.
“They looked at it like, ‘Why wouldn’t you let your kids eat ice cream and cake [just] like everybody else? Why are you trying to be different? This is a shame.’ That’s how they looked at it. They didn’t look at it like, ‘This is a person who’s trying to eat healthily,’” Beverly said.
Disregarding societal norms, she wasn’t willing to let her kids have to unlearn what she had about eating poorly.
Electing to ignore the critique, Beverly was ahead of her time in finding new ways to provide nutrients all through a raw vegan diet. Now, with the times catching up to her, All the Way Live Cafe located in Germantown, Philadelphia is providing the predominantly Black community with new ways of cooking and consuming.
We’re definitely changing that assumption for Black people to understand that food is the gateway to you living a healthy, beautiful life.
Beverly Nedley
According to the CDC, “African Americans ages 18 to 49 are two times as likely to die from heart disease than whites,” as well as “African Americans ages 35 to 64 years are 50 percent more likely to have high blood pressure than whites.”
Due to redlining, food deserts and other practices that promote food and health inequities, Black Americans have had to acclimate to surviving off a poor unbalanced diet. As stated by The Public Health Effects of Food Deserts, “In the United States, those who live in urban and rural low-income neighborhoods are less likely to have access to supermarkets or grocery stores that provide healthy food choices. While many food desert studies have focused primarily on their socioeconomic determinants, less is known about their public health impacts—including the prevalence of obesity and the incidence of chronic diseases—on local populations.”
Black Americans are often victims of inaccessibility when it comes to healthy and fresh food. All the Way Live Cafe is Beverly’s counter to this narrative. Her aim is to not only provide delicious meals for patrons of her restaurant, but to reintroduce her community to the history of raw cooking, hoping to elicit a change in eating habits.
Beverly is eager to help others find the beauty and longevity of clean eating. Located in a historically Black neighborhood, Beverly says she is used to seeing all walks of life come through her door, young and old, Black and white, but she is particularly concerned with changing the minds and diets of Black Americans who suffer from the greatest dietary and health risk factors.
“Our community [has] the highest rates of heart disease, high blood pressure, all kinds of diabetes, a malady, and African Americans are at the top of the list,” she warned.
Wanting to invest in themselves as much as their neighborhood, the mother-daughter duo planted roots on Germantown Avenue and haven’t stopped serving the community since.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many small businesses and restaurants have watched their livelihoods shutter, but All The Way Live Cafe has stood the test of time to continue serving chickpea chili for another day. Beverly is helping popularize veganism and raw eating again within the Black community no matter what criticisms she receives,.
Whether or not you’ve considered divulging into vegetarianism or veganism—Beverly is waiting and willing to take you along for the raw food journey.
All photos courtesy of the All the Way Live Cafe Facebook page.
