Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
Over the past 15 years, Caryn Dugan (a.k.a. STL Veg Girl) has become a go-to resource for all things plant-based, both locally and nationally. She's the founder of the Center for Plant-Based Living, which offers plant-based cooking classes, recipes, private events, and more. We recently caught up with Dugan.
Has your mission changed after all this time? The mission is still the exact same: a plant on every plate. I don’t beat the vegan or plant-based drum—what I do is offer education. It’s about empowering people and giving them the information. Then they can do whatever they want with it.
How did your plant-based journey begin? I started on a vegan/plant-based diet in 2008, because I lost my dad to cancer and, 10 weeks later, I got diagnosed with cancer. For about two and a half years, I slowly went down this path. I started the STL Veg Girl Twitter account, so I could follow other people who were in this plant-based space. I started helping someone teach [plant-based] classes at Whole Foods twice a month. When she left town, Whole Foods asked me to stay and teach the class. I had never taught anybody anything. I went home and told my husband, "Get a load of this," and he said, "You should totally do it." I said, "I don’t know how to teach. I don’t know how to cook. I don’t know what I’m doing." And he said, "Figure it out."... The paperwork [from Whole Foods] asked for a business name, so I put in my STL Veg Girl Twitter handle, and that’s how it became a business.
How did STL Veg Girl evolve into The Center For Plant Based Living? By 2017, I had been doing events, classes, and restaurant collaborations for quite a while. There’s no greater joy than seeing someone reverse their Type 2 diabetes or heart disease, bring down their PSA number, blood pressure, or cholesterol by eating differently. I started to see people really change their life, but then a handful of them would go back to the way of eating that got them in trouble. I wondered why some people were going back when they’ve seen the beauty of healing themselves. I’m also a certified health coach, and it hit me: They need support. When you want to change your diet, you’ve got to be an expert overnight because you’re going to get a lot of questions, and you’re the "weird one." So it’s very easy to revert back to your old ways of eating that are more culturally acceptable and get sick again. It’s difficult to stay the course. There’s a brick-and-mortar for everything: the cancer support community, Parkinson’s [disease], diabetes... All of these things have support, but there was nothing for plant-based eating. I called on some of my colleagues in the plant-based community and found out there was nothing like this in the U.S. I thought, That’s what I need to do. When you’re sick and want to see if you can be healthier by having more plants on your plate, then you shouldn’t have to look around for a cooking class—you have enough going on. So for two years, I saved everything I made, and on the anniversary of my dad’s passing, August 13, 2019, we opened the nations’ first—and still only—fully plant-based nutrition and culinary education center, the Center For Plant-Based Living.
Along with classes and special events, what else does the center offer? I try to offer different things for everyone, because everyone learns in different ways. We just started a YouTube channel, The Doc & Chef, with me and Jim [Loomis], the center's medical director. He’s great with the science because he uses layman’s terms. He talks about the science, and I show it on the plate. We also have center memberships with various levels, where you can get access to monthly cooking classes and support from me, access to Dr. Loomis on a quarterly basis, and the whole library of past classes and videos.
