How Food and Music Control Your Consciousness—And How I Broke Free
I haven't eaten meat since October 12th, 1975. But changing my diet was just the beginning.
Anthony BrowderOct 15, 2025
October 12th 1975 was the last time I ate meat or chicken.
And becoming vegetarian was one of the best decisions I ever made.
How Dick Gregory and Dr. Alvenia Fulton Changed My Life
I’m from Chicago and came to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University in 1971.After I spent my first winter in DC, where the temperature never got below freezing and snowed only once—and the snow was gone the next day. I said I was never going back to Chicago.
True to my word, I’ve lived in D.C. for the past 53 years.
Living in DC exposed me to a broad cross section of people. I met Black folk from across the country, throughout the Caribbean and the African continent. This environment opened my eyes were opened to new ideas and experiences I never knew existed.
After graduating from Howard, I began hanging out with vegetarians.
The term veganism wasn’t used at that time—either you were a meat eater or a vegetarian. I began reading more about the association between diet and health.
One of my primary inspirations was Dick Gregory.
Dick Gregory was the first Black comedian to perform at the Chicago’s Playboy Club where he packed the house regularly. He also picked up the nasty habit of smoking a carton of cigarettes and drinking two quarts of alcohol daily. In an effort to clean up his life, Dick was introduced to Dr. Alvenia Fulton, a well-known health practitioner on Chicago’s South Side.
Dr. Fulton became Gregory’s health guru and taught him about healthy eating.
As Dick Gregory changed his lifestyle he changed his way of life. He became an advocate for healthy eating, righteous living and the comedic voice of the Civil Rights Movement. Dick used his fame and fortune to bail Civil Rights protestors out of jail and raised funds for the Movement. He ran for President in 1968 and ran across the country, from LA to New York City in 1976 to protest world hunger.
I was profoundly influenced by Gregory’s second book “Cooking with Mother Nature” and was drawn to his philosophy for becoming a vegetarian.
Dick made it plain, he said:
I read that book and it resonated with me.
That book led me to “Back to Eden” by Jethro Kloss, which became my vegetarian Bible.
“Back to Eden” referenced the dangers of cooking meat at high temperature which makes the cells in the meat carcinogenic. A week later, while listening to the 6 o’clock news, Walter Cronkite referenced a new study where scientists discovered that cooking meat at a certain temperature turns the meat cells carcinogenic.
I thought to myself, “Well wait a minute, Jethro Kloss said the same thing 40 years ago, so there must be some value to his research.”
Once I stopped eating meat and chicken, I stopped getting colds.
While living in Chicago, I usually caught two or three colds a year, but once I stopped eating meat, I stopped creating the environment within my body where the cold virus could live and populate. I saw an immediate connection between diet and health.
As I continued my journey to enlightenment, I was working a regular 9 to 5 and began making plans to free myself from the traditional rat race and become self-employed.
Running my own business meant I had to be responsible for generating income, and the best way to generate income was by ensuring that I was in good physical health. I had already learned the relationship between diet and health, and once I added money into the mix, all the pieces came together.
I made the decision to stop eating meat and chicken October 12th, 1975. The rebel in me decided that on the day Columbus supposedly discovered America, I would celebrate the day I discovered myself.
I’ve been on that path ever since and have had no regrets.
My family in Chicago thought I had lost my mind. I grew up eating spareribs, chicken, ham, hamburgers, hot dogs and turkey because that was what I knew.
But once I knew better, I started doing better. I learned the word diet means “way of life.”
The biggest challenge I faced was being in the company of people who didn’t understand, or mocked me for changing my diet, my “new” way of life. When I went home for holidays my aunt, who’s more like my sister, would taunt me by waving a piece of chicken in front of my face. But I smiled and kept eating my greens, meatless dressing and cornbread. Those family gatherings taught me the value of self-discipline and, over time, my family learned to respect my decision.
I was able to be in the presence of meat eaters and know that I was not going to eat the meat.
Over the years, when I began to see the long-term benefits of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, my weight has not fluctuated much from what it was when I graduated from college 51 years ago. I don’t have any of the illnesses many of my colleagues, family and friends have. Regrettably, I’ve lost family and friends to diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and other illnesses that are largely preventable.
Fortunately, I’ve been healthy, and I associate the quality of my health with the quality of the foods I’ve eaten over the past five decades.
Food and Consciousness: What I Got Wrong for 20 Years
As I’ve been evolving along my journey to enlightenment, my thinking has also evolved.I know that if you are what you eat, eating foods that are healthy will make you healthy. I also know that there is a direct association between food and consciousness.
This confirmation assured me that I was moving in the right direction.
I developed the discipline to live in a meat-eating environment and not eat meat. This strengthened my resolve. As a result of strengthening my resolve, I was able to raise my consciousness.
I went through a phase where I thought that I was better than the meat eaters but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that many of my friends who are vegetarian — Dick Gregory and other health-conscious people I admired, started getting ill.
The reason for their illnesses wasn’t because they were vegetarians, a lot of it had to do with deteriorating environmental conditions and there no doubt that our environment is screwed up. Everything, everywhere is polluted:
- The air is polluted
- The soil is polluted
- The water is polluted
- Microplastics are everywhere and in everybody
I began re-evaluating the Standard American Diet (SAD) and concluded that we must take responsibility for what we put into our bodies. If you’re going to eat meat, we should eat good cuts of meat, and we should be aware of our environment.
All these factors determine how well and how long we live.
I know many people who are vegetarian or vegan and have a “holier than thou” attitude, which I know is flawed. I also know a lot of meat eaters who do good work – because they chose to follow a different path.
There is a direct association between food and consciousness, but it’s not the only denominator.
I thought about what a society would look like if its leader was a vegetarian or a vegan and hired advisors and staff who were vegetarian and had a similar mindset.
I found out there was such a society.
That society existed in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s and was led by a vegetarian named Adolf Hitler.
The reality is, just because you’re vegetarian and eat well doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily going to be a better human being.
I’ve come to understand and appreciate the benefits of cultivating a different relationship with food—as Elijah Muhammad outlined in his book How to Eat to Live—but I also know that living a righteous and meaningful life makes all difference in the world.
Making wise decisions about the quality of the food you consume elevates your consciousness and enables you to see clearly because your mind and body are free of contaminants.
When you elevate your consciousness, you begin to realize that there are other factors that must be taken into consideration to fulfil your reason for living.
What does it mean to fulfil your reason for living?
For me, it meant understanding the various factors that influenced my life. Diet is a crucial first step that leads to the awareness of other important steps.
I began to learn about energy.
Everything Is Energy
I learned that everything is energy and energy is in everything.Energy exists on many different frequencies. As energy slows down, it becomes denser, it materializes and solidifies. As energy increases it changes from a solid to a liquid to a gas. Water is a perfect example of this transformative process. When you change the temperature of water, you can see how a change of energy changes the molecular structure of water.
Our bodies are 70 percent water and are also affected by subtle changes of energy.
This can by demonstrated by the seven energy centers in our bodies called chakras.
The first chakra is the Root chakra, which represents the earth, the foundation, and the lower frequency vibrations.
The seventh chakra is the Crown chakra, which represents the head, heaven, and the highest frequence vibrations. The five chakras in between the root and crown are activated by higher expressions of energy.
One of the purposes of life is to learn to move your energy higher and higher, from the root to the crown chakra, which connects you with spirit and with the ancestors.
Each chakra is a different vibration and a different energy.
Earth, Wind & Fire encouraged their listeners to raise their energy with their 1975 hit song, “That’s the Way of the World.” They sang:
“Hearts afire
Creates love desire
High and higher
To your place on the throne”
They were talking about moving your energy from a lower chakra to the heart level, the level of boundless love.
Once your energy is raised to the level of your Heart chakra it’s easier to elevate your energy “higher, higher” to the Crown chakra — your place on the throne (Heaven).
This song wasn’t just about entertainment. It was about inner attainment. Philip Bailey and Maurice White were providing essential life lessons through their songs and music.
What I discovered along my journey to enlightenment is that there were people who had walked this path before us and left breadcrumbs for us to follow.
The music and lyrics of Earth, Wind and Fire were intended to open the minds of those who are ready to be informed and elevated.
Music and Consciousness
Music is one of the most effective vehicles for enhancing consciousness.Everybody loves music. Music is energy. Just like food, music can either elevate your consciousness or diminish it.
If you think about much of the music young folk are listening to today, it’s music it’s geared toward lowering their consciousness and keeping it in the Root chakra.
Much of the music focuses on drugs, sex, materialism, selfishness and denigrating others. The music industry began promoting “unconsciousness” music in the 80s order to suppress the consciousness of black people.
If you contrast the muse of today to the music of my generation (the 60s) — Motown, Curtis Mayfield, the Chi-Lites — it was music that transformed the consciousness of Black People and motived them to “Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” and “Give More Power to the People.”
I contend that the 60s was the most significant decade within the past two centuries.
Black folk developed a sense of power and consciousness that was fuelled by music.
The music had a message that expanded the consciousness of those who listened to it. But those who benefit from keeping us functioning on a subservient level had to undo that consciousness and make us comfortable accepting less.
They introduced a different form of music that changed the vibration and focused our time and energy on things that debased us and made us comfortable living at a lower level.
But music isn’t the only thing carrying vibration into our bodies.
The food does too.
The Vibration of Death
Everything is about vibration.There is vibration in all the food we eat. Those vibrations either make us healthier or sicker. There is vibration in food fed to the animals that we consume.
Vibrations of death are in the air of the slaughterhouses where hundreds of animals are being killed.
As these frightened animals sense death around them they secrete adrenaline into their bloodstream which saturates their flesh as they are being slaughtered. That adrenaline laden flesh is then shipped throughout the nation, sold in restaurants and supermarkets and consumed by millions of unsuspecting customers who, bite after bite, slowly become what they eat.
With the creation of the fast-food industry and the introduction of high fructose corn syrup and ultra processed food, it’s safe to say that we’re no longer eating food.
We’ve been eating ultra-processed commodities disguised as food since the 70s.
Sugar is in almost every food product sold.
What the average person doesn’t know is that the chemical structure of sugar is one molecule away from crack. There is no doubt that junk food produces food junkies.
Scientists have shown that sugar is as addictive as:
- Cocaine,
- Heroin, and
- Nicotine,
The truth is we live in a sick care society, not a health care society. Food manufacturers, medical schools and pharmaceutical companies work in concert to keep you just alive enough so that you don’t die and they continue to turn a profit.
Some people think it’s just about corporate greed. Just about companies trying to maximize profit. But when you step back and look at the pattern, you realize this has been going on for quite some time.
This is how this country has always operated - keeping a population alive enough to extract value from them, but not healthy enough, or educated enough, to be free.
That’s not an accident. That’s the blueprint.
The Foundation of This Country
United States is not a democracy.Never was. United States is a slave-ocracy built on a foundation of death and destruction.
That pattern has not changed.
The only thing that can change is the consciousness of the people moving through this society. You must understand how things function in this society and most of the world. Once your understanding is clear you must have the courage to change your conditions and begin to change your life. Then you can move through this death-centered environment without becoming physically, mentally, or spiritually compromised.
Once you tap into a different energy and a different consciousness, you can nourish your body, mind and soul.
That’s what this whole journey called life is all about.
Respecting the Journey
Not everybody has the capacity to understand and resonate with thought-transforming energy vibrations.If they’re eating foods that won’t allow them to change their frequency, then they’re going to stay stuck and be comfortable being stuck.
What I’ve learned over time is that as you grow your natural tendency is to want to reach out and save those closest to you: family members, loved ones, friends. But the reality is that everybody is exactly where they want to be, whether they know it or not.
It’s a matter of respecting people’s decision to eat poorly or listen to music that lowers their vibration.
That’s their choice and they are entitled to their right to be wrong.
The only thing we can do is model the benefits of eating healthy and thinking healthy, and when people are ready to look for a new path in life, they can look to you as an example.
They can come to you, ask you questions, and then follow your example and change their lives.
That’s the process.
It’s all about understanding the environment in which we live, knowing how to negotiate that environment, and then maximizing your outcome so that you can leave something of value for those who come behind you.
I see a person making healthy choices about the foods they eat, as a critical first step in the process of mental, physical and spiritual development.
Many factors have to be taken into consideration for us to do the things that we ultimately have the capacity to do.
That’s the work we’re here to do. It’s an incredible journey and we all deserve the right to take it at some point in our lives.
Thanks for reading
Anthony Browder
Founder of IKG
P.S Join Me for My Final Tours to Kemet
July 7th and December 14th, 2026 mark my last Egypt study tours after 39 years.
This is your final opportunity to walk where your ancestors walked, see what they built, and understand why they preserved this knowledge for you.
Reserve your place here.
If you want more information on the tours, I have put together a video which explains everything:
