--- title: "World Vegetarian Congress 1996 - Some things seen through \"European Vegetarian Glasses\" - IVU - International Vegetarian Union" description: "World Vegetarian Congress 1996 - Some things seen through \"European Vegetarian Glasses\": Some things seen through \"European Vegetarian Glasses\" - travelling in New York and Pennsylvania and attending the IVU Congress from EVU News, Issue 3 / 1996 Jeans for heavily overweight people found in a shop" url: "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=article&id=4246:congress-wvc96-reports-glasses&catid=204" date: "2026-11-06T00:19:29+00:00" language: "en-GB" --- # World Vegetarian Congress 1996 - Some things seen through "European Vegetarian Glasses" **Some things seen through "European Vegetarian Glasses"** **- travelling in New York and Pennsylvania and attending the IVU Congress** *from EVU News, Issue 3 / 1996* ![image: fat jeans](https://ivu.org/images/legacy/history/congress/wvc96/reports/6.jpg) *Jeans for heavily overweight people found in a shop at Pittsburgh.*There is an **excellent salad bar** in nearly every mall and big foodshops. No difficulty at all to get delicious vegetarian food while travelling at least for eaters of raw food. The vegetables are often organically grown. Americans seem to bother more about cholestorol than about sugar, everywhere you can read: **low in fat!** America is **not as criminal** as TV makes out: Even a forgotten handbag with all the cash, traveller cheques, flight tickets, passports, was handed in. In the States you can see more fat people than anywhere else. There are a lot of electric wheelchairs with young, **heavily overweight people** in them, unable to walk by themselves anymore. Invitations to **Vegetarian Cooking Classes** can be found along the street in Rochester. In the museum of Provinctown/Cape Cod NE there is a **cookbook of the pilgrims**, who landed more than 300 years ago in the beautiful peninsula, with only 2 recipes requiring any meat, all the rest of about 30 recipes were simple and **completely vegetarian**. Americans do not bother about **saving energy**: During the whole week in Johnstown every building of the Congress-Centre was illuminated completely by day and night. Although the weather was rather cool the air conditioning was blowing steadily. ![image: sign](https://ivu.org/images/legacy/history/congress/wvc96/reports/8.jpg) *Near Rochester***Vegetarians like cooked food**. The line at the Congress Buffet with cooked food was endless, the line behind the salad bar was rather short. Nourishment without meat does not mean automatically healthy food. **Overweight and bad physical shape** can be observed among vegetarians and even among exponents of important vegetarian societies and movements. In every large foodstore you can read: "Did you have your **5 servings of fruit and vegetables** today?" or "Fruit, the healthy choice!" There is a special friendliness and brotherhood among vegetarians. You could notice the difference during the days after the congress, when the Campus was populated by people on summer camps. *Sigrid De Leo* A note on this archive. The history section of this website is drawn from a body of legacy content originally compiled by John Davis, former manager of the International Vegetarian Union. It represents his curation of historical material, and in places includes passages written by him directly. Over the years, the IVU website has migrated between several different hosting servers. In the course of these migrations, a number of PDF files were unfortunately lost, and **some links to PDF documents may no longer function**. Where this is the case, we have chosen to leave the original link text in place, as it may itself carry information of historical value. - Hits: 1043 ## Schema ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://ivu.org/hv-congress-main-congress-wvc96-index.html?view=article&id=4246:congress-wvc96-reports-glasses&catid=204","url":"https://ivu.org/hv-congress-main-congress-wvc96-index.html?view=article&id=4246:congress-wvc96-reports-glasses&catid=204","name":"World Vegetarian Congress 1996 - Some things seen through \"European Vegetarian Glasses\"","inLanguage":"en","isPartOf":[{"@id":"https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html#archive"},{"@id":"https://ivu.org/hv-congress-main-congress-wvc96-index.html"}],"publisher":{"@id":"https://ivu.org/#organization"},"description":"Some things seen through \"European Vegetarian Glasses\" - travelling in New York and Pennsylvania and attending the IVU Congress from EVU News, Issue 3 / 1996 Jeans for heavily overweight people found…","about":{"@id":"https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html#wvc-1996"}}]} ``` ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://ivu.org" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "History of IVU", "item": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "History of the Vegetarian Societies", "item": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=category&id=46" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "congress", "item": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=category&id=83" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 5, "name": "wvc96", "item": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=category&id=203" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 6, "name": "reports", "item": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=category&id=204" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 7, "name": "World Vegetarian Congress 1996 - Some things seen through "European Vegetarian Glasses"", "item": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html" } ] } ``` ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html" }, "headline": "World Vegetarian Congress 1996 - Some things seen through \"European Vegetarian Glasses\"", "description": "World Vegetarian Congress 1996 - Some things seen through \"European Vegetarian Glasses\": Some things seen through \"European Vegetarian Glasses\" - travelling in New York and Pennsylvania and attending the IVU Congress from EVU News, Issue 3 / 1996 Jeans for heavily overweight people found in a shop", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "International Vegetarian Union", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://ivu.org/images/logos/logo-ivu-tranparent-background.png" } }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Alex Fernandes", "url": "https://ivu.org/international-council.html" }, "datePublished": "2026-06-30T23:45:26+00:00", "dateCreated": "2026-06-25T00:17:01+00:00", "dateModified": "2026-10-08T00:52:59+00:00" } ```