Resilient Palisades Hosts Vegan Food Truck Event

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

The Resilient Palisades Plant Based Solutions team hosted a Vegan Food Truck Event on Sunday, April 25, on Swarthmore Avenue—garnering so much success that the trucks sold out of many of their menu items just halfway through the afternoon.

“Based on the number of sales reported by each food truck, I’d say over 300 people attended our event,” organizer and leader of the Plant Based Solutions team Aleksandar Pavlović shared.

Participating in the inaugural event were three trucks: Word of Mouth, Original Herbivore and Compton Vegan.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm from people who attended,” according to Pavlović. “Many people said they were happy to see more vegan food in the Palisades.”

Pavlović shared that some of the attendees traveled from across Los Angeles to attend. Everyone he spoke with said they loved the taste of the food.

Sarah Marti-Corral, another member of the team, shared that “the day was fantastic.”

“Going to Veg Fests is a monumental experience,” she shared. “Food brings people together. Being on the organizing side of this was an honor and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be a part of making Palisades history. Grateful to Resilient Palisades for brining me on the team. Big thanks to my husband, Jordan, for always opening new doors with me.”

The team, one of several that fall under the umbrella of Resilient Palisades, plans on hosting other events like this in the future.

“The successful turnout from this event exceeded our expectations and showed us that there is definitely a demand for more vegan food in the Palisades,” he added.

Locally based environmental nonprofit Resilient Palisades, which was launched in 2020, has four teams, including Zero Waste Team, Clean Air and Water: Green Gardens and Clean Energy Resilience Team. The Plant Based Solutions team was created to “effectively communicate the power of a plant based diet and lifestyle to help stop and reverse climate change while supporting [the] local community in becoming more vegan-friendly,” according to the organization’s website.

The team aims to “inspire excitement around living a healthy vegan lifestyle,” with “taste, quality and convenience” not being sacrificed.

Pavlović explained that it was important for the team to plan this event, and others like it, because “vegan diets tend to have significantly lower carbon, water and ecological footprints than diets that consist of meat, dairy, fish and eggs.”

“We wanted to promote food choices that are far more sustainable for our environment,” he added. “We understand that it’s hard for many people to give up or cut down on animal products. That’s why we planned this event in our community, to show that there are a variety of delicious vegan foods to choose from and that one doesn’t have to feel like they are making a compromise with flavor when making food choices that help our environment.”

Pavlović explained that the United Nations published a report in the beginning of 2021 saying that meat-eating diets and agricultural production around the world are so carbon-intensive, that emissions from the global food system alone would be enough to put the Paris climate goals out of reach—even if all other major sources of emissions were closed down.

“Cutting out any amount of animal products from our diet is a great start that will go a long way to save the lives of animals, improve our health and heal the environment,” Pavlović concluded.