The World Vegan Summit was held at the Marriot hotel in Marina del Rey, California from March 20-22 with over 300 attendees. Director of Food for Life, Paul Rodney Turner was a guest speaker, giving a talk on the work of Food for Life Global volunteers from around the world in the main ballroom to a packed crowd.

Turner started his presentation by sharing his experience as a monk for 14 years and how his first service was cooking and feeding people in need. “I eventually learned to cook for very large numbers,” he said. “One time I made a feast for 10,000 people.”

Host of the event, radio personality Bob Linden introduced Paul and mentioned to the audience that Food for Life Global affiliates were now serving over 1.5 million meals daily, to which the crowd were stunned to hear. “We are actually the world’s largest food relief,” explained Turner. “But we also happen to serve only vegan meals.”

Turner then went on to explain the essence of Food for Life Global’s objectives: to unite the world through pure food and how this mission objective came to be. “World hunger is not because of a lack of food, it is because of inequitable distribution. But no one is asking why is there an inequitable distribution? The reason for that is inequality. If the people of the world really embraced equality, there would be no hint of racism, specism, or any kind of discrimination and world hunger would disappear overnight.”

Turner then showed video highlights of Food for Life projects around the world, to which the audience was amazed and many cried.

In the afternoon, Turner did a food yoga presentation and demonstrated how to make raw, vegan chocolate chip mint ice cream and raw vegan brownies.