Not Your Typical Meathead
Kenneth Williams, America’s first vegan bodybuilder talks about lifestyle, diet, and the path that opened his eyes.

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HLNYC Interview

August 16, 2005

The sun poured down on a Saturday afternoon, when I noticed a well-built man with a million dollar smile posing for a photo with two young girls. Is that him? The girls are wearing Vegan Muscle Power T-shirts. He’s only been in New York for 12 hours, and he has groupies?

But that’s Kenneth. Some people take over a room, Ken can take over a city. This was only the beginning of a whirlwind day that would have a camera crew following Kenneth for the vegan documentary response to Supersize Me, tentatively titled Veganize Me. Before the day was over, Bernadette Peters would strike up a random conversation with Kenneth in Riverside Park, PETA’s Veg Kids would stop by for questions, and I would be questioning my own lifestyle more than expected. If he could place first in his division in the Natural Olympia, could I ever claim that the vegan lifestyle was too physically de- manding for me to maintain?

HLNYC: So it seems like you’re getting pretty used to the cameras already.

Yeah, I’m doing Undercover TV, so I’ve been getting used to reading off the teleprompters and doing lots of interviews.

HLNYC: What’s Undercover TV all about? Is that just in California?

It’s actually out here too. It’s all over. In fact, if it’s not in your area, you can call In Defense of Animals or go to IDAUSA. org and request to have it on. What I do is speak about all the atrocities that happen on factory farms. I set up the footage viewers are about to see. It comes on late at night, because it does get graphic, and if you do have kids, it’s not really geared for them. It’s good to get them the message, but...that’s why I really started do- ing CHOICE. Do something for the adults and something for the kids.

HLNYC: How do you reach the kids?

I just got involved with a program called CHOICE (Citizens for Healthy Options in Children’s Education). It started in New York, and we’re just now getting started in the Bay Area, so I’m going to help spearhead the program out there. It’s all about putting plant-based meals in schools across the country. This awareness has got to start somewhere, and I’m so happy to be involved with CHOICE, because it taps into the youth. And if I can do anything to get the youth to understand that you don’t have to do all these harmful things to your body to become this superhero.

HLNYC: Short of fighting crime, how can kids become superheroes?

Well, the real superheroes are from the Earth. So if you eat healthy, stay in school, pray—whoever you’re praying to, and stay positive—keep a positive mental attitude through the whole thing. There are going be some people, whether you’re vegan or not, that are going to knock you down. That’s why I want to help them become mentally strong. because that’s where it’s at—no fear, no more being scared—then you’re a superhero.

HLNYC: So Undercover TV has opened you up to a whole new world. What have you learned in your time hosting that show?

It opened my eyes because I never knew what was going on. I had never been to a factory farm; I’d never been on a farm before. I just recently started to go now, because as a vegan my curiosity is awakened. I just went to the store before and would buy a piece of chicken, and never thought, ‘Well, where did this come from?’ I was not taught to think like that. So Undercover TV really opened my eyes to all the atrocities that are taking place, on farms, with the seals, with cats, and dogs. I see all that stuff. I’m like this walking dictionary now, of all this stuff in my head. And my wife, she was already like that, but she never really talked to me about it, because she thought that I’d be saying hush, hush, hush all the time. But now she’s telling me to hush, because I’m always talking about it.

HLNYC: Now that you know what’s going on behind the scenes, how can we get it to stop?

Well, even though I know that my wife agrees with my perspective, we still discuss it in a very pleasant way. That’s the only way to get these problems to stop. Bring it to the people and let them make up their own mind. Don’t force it on them—just let them make up there own mind about whether they still want to eat meat. Because it’s not the meat, it’s what they’re doing to the meat that’s making people sick. If you were to kill a healthy cow, like back in the day, that would be okay. Now, it’s about money. That’s what factory farming is about. And they’re using all these harmful steroids and toxins, all these things to make that cow 20 times bigger. When I was a kid, my mom would go to the store and get a chicken, and it would be this little piece of chicken. You go to a store now, boy, and it’s like a prehistoric chicken. Its wings are the size of the damn table. Like a damn Pterodactyl! So now to get this to stop, we need people to understand what they’re putting in their bodies, because they’re getting sick, and making the doctors rich, because of their ignorance. And being ignorant is not a bad thing, it’s just that if you know something, you have to do something about it. And if you don’t do something about it then, that’s ignorance.

HLNYC: Do you feel like the movement is picking up steam? Are we at a point where education to the masses can happen? Where people do have that choice?

Some people do have a choice because they’re at a certain level where their money allows them to live a certain lifestyle. But what about the little people that don’t have any money? They’re the people that don’t have the education— they don’t know anything about being a vegan. And vegan is an old word. That goes back to biblical times. We were all vegans back then, Jesus, Moses—and they were big—20 times bigger than me.

When you see paintings of the Greek gods, these guys were humongous. They were bigger than Shaq, because they were eating great! At the time, that was the capital of learning where Socrates studied, where Ulysses trained. But these guys that we worship, they didn’t even graduate, because the people teaching them had the wrong information. And eventually, it all fell. Now, we’re teaching the wrong standards again, and if we don’t stop doing what we’re doing, this is all going to fall. So we need to make a statement, and there are a lot of people that are ready to make the paradigm shift.

HLNYC: And what do you see that shift being?

Well, pretty soon people are going to be forced to eat like this, for health reasons. And I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t think it should be forced. It should just be there. We should be able to go to any store on the corner and pick up some vegan junk food if we want to. We should be able to have that choice, but we don’t. And there’s so much stuff out there, and still you have to go to specific places to get vegan food. But it should be everywhere; you should have the choice. I mean, we’re Americans, right? This is why we’re here, to have a choice. So let’s have a choice.

HLNYC: What is your choice for your sweet tooth? How do you indulge?

Cheesecake, baby, cheesecake. Vegan oatmeal cookies, molasses cookies. Tofootie. You ever tried that? It tastes just like ice cream. Yeah, man, an ice cream sandwich. They come in all flavors, but I like vanilla. That’s my sweet tooth right there. And I feel good eating it, because I know it’s not going to be that harmful to me. Rather than eating a cookie that’s got all these preservatives and harmful stuff in it. I mean what is red number 5? What is that stuff? And how much energy does your body have to put into cleansing itself of all that garbage. No way. Give me a vegan cookie, and I’ll be happy. But you know, if I’m training for a competition, I’ll eat a sweet potato. Give me a sweet potato with some vegan butter, and I’m just a fat, happy kid. But that’s only for competitions.

HLNYC: You were a personal trainer for 15 years. You said that you always have your clients set mental goals, and obviously you’ve achieved a lot of the goals that you’ve set out to do. Where do you see yourself going as far as bodybuilding, as a vegan, an activist, and a human?

I want to keep working with kids. You can’t just push them away because they’re little. They’ve got the Internet. They can go look up what I say. It’s not a secret. I just want to be there, to be their big brother, and maybe say something special. I would love to start a camp, where kids could learn about being a vegan, and I could take them to a farm and maybe to the gym to show them that they can become Supermen if they want to. Still being an activist. Still doing Undercover TV. Still doing CHOICE. And as long as I keep working hard as an athlete, and keep good people around me, the rest should fall in place.

If you’d like to learn more about Kenneth’s diet and workout routine, check out his website at www.veganmusclepower.com