Before food was divided into six quadrants of a pyramid, there were Four Food Groups:

ONE. “Meats, poultry, fish, dry beans, peas, eggs and nuts.” If your beans weren’t dry, you’d better have been eating meats, poultry, fish, peas, eggs and nuts to compensate. TWO. Dairy. THREE. Grains. FOUR. Fruits and vegetables.

Ideally, you would have four meals a day, one for each of the groups.

In the early 1990s, we realized that eating only four things sounded kind of limiting. So fruits and vegetables were accorded their own categories, and the now five groups were molded into a pyramid, capped with a pointy hat of sweets and vegetable oils, acknowledged for the first time in nutritional history. (In retrospect, maybe those should have stayed a secret.) Even more radically, the pyramid picked favorites. Sweets and oils were to be used sparingly, while grains were the foundation, to be gorged upon. The only thing it didn’t change is that the beans are still dry. So crunch away.

Then I went to the World Veg Fest in San Francisco and saw that it changed yet again!

Now we’re back to the four food groups, revised for the vegan epoch. The dairy group is gone completely. There’s not even a hemp milk/almond milk/oat milk, cultured coconut yogurt and Daiya vegan cheese group to replace it.

Only two foods have been salvaged from the “meats, poultry, fish, dry beans, peas, eggs and nuts” group, which has become the “chickpeas, baked and refried beans, soymilk, tempeh and texturized vegetable protein” group. In other words, the “look at all the things we can turn beans into” group.

After the musical fruit group, we have the beach bum fruit group; just be sure to wash your fruit’s sunscreen off before you eat. Sweets and oils are gone again, but two pyramid innovations remain — rollerskating vegetables get their own group, and surfer dude grains are the foundation of a healthy diet.

Note that there are no nuts in this quartered vegan future. Nuts are relegated to the lard bin of nutritional history, as mankind’s destiny will be a lipidless one.

Let’s hope everyone reads the fine print about supplementing with B12, or we could be leaving the fate of this world in the hands of an anemic, gastrointestionally-compromised nervous-system-disorder-plagued (yet hyper-compassionate) humanity.

Anyway, good to know what we’re supposed to be eating. Let’s watch the vegans at The World Veg Fest, San Francisco put nutritional theory into action.

Soy yogurt: a dirt-biking legume.

These bottles of green powder represent the pinnacle of health for vegans. You know all the “normal” foods you eat? Cowering weaklings, all of them, compared to superfoods like spirulna! This algae product is perhaps the best source for B12-blocking B12 analogues in the world, which doesn’t sound like something that vegans would go out of their way for, but it turns out that for most vegans, it isn’t enough to bury B12 — no, they have to put on cleats and stomp on its grave.

This was the first time I ever saw anyone say “Open up and say ahhh!” before feeding herself.

I have to believe that the “Joyful Eating!” sign is for something else.

Mock kangaroo pouch. I love it when fake meats get creative.

I had to give this man the Heimlich later. He choked on a miniature walkman in his carrot juice.

She asked for the burrito, but clearly had her eye on the green liquid. When veganism becomes too easy, it’s a good idea to give yourself these little willpower tests every once in a while.

Another green powder for vegans to swear by.

Vegans are so used to being paranoid about what is in their food that even at vegetarian events they can’t drop their guard. “This tastes a little creamy,” she said. “Did they put fish sauce in this?” Cute how vegans forget which animal products are which.

A giant bag of gojis, yet another superfood, this time in dried, chewy berry form. Better keep your eye on that bag of red gold, buddy — there are vegan body builders in these parts.

I don’t know what is in those boxes, but I’d recognize those white baggies anywhere — that’s the vegan mac & cheese from NYC’s Veggie Conquest.

Howard Lyman was here too, but this was the real Mad Cowboy.

This food looked actually looked good, so I made sure not to get it in the frame.

A lot of vegans start off being against caffeine. An unnaturally quickened heart rate has nothing to do with animal products, but avoiding it meshes well with a purity-minded lifestyle. As your veganism wears on, though… and the spring in your step turns to a shuffle… and the brain fog swirls ever more densely, even the most anti-caffeine vegans eventually turn to green tea and then sometimes even to coffee, just to be able to keep moving. Soy and caffeine — long-term veganism would be impossible without them.

Suck the soy marrow out of life.