How to Be a Conscious Eater

road consensus applies among all countries except the

United States (as of this printing) that we need to do

everything possible to fight the tide of climate change.

And protecting the planet is arguably the single most

important reason to reduce meat consumption.

I am by no stretch a vegan myself, but frankly, the planet

needs more people to eat more plant-based foods and fewer

animal-based foods. Generally speaking, animal-based foods

are less efficient uses of natural resources because you’re

growing animal feed and relying on these creatures to convert

that feed into food that humans eat, rather than just grow-

ing food for humans to eat directly. By just about every metric

used to evaluate the environmental impact of making food,

the plant kingdom beats the animal kingdom by a long shot.

Some people use the term flexitarian for a diet that consci-

entiously reduces meat consumption. It is not a vegetarian

or vegan diet. It’s a mostly vegetarian diet that might occa-

sionally include meat and fish. You can still enjoy a burger. It

simply urges us all to make a continually conscious effort to

shift to eating mainly plant-based foods. In the aggregate, this

approach could cut total livestock emissions in half. It could

also greatly lower our individual risk for developing a major

chronic illness, avoiding millions and millions of premature

deaths around the globe. So—it’s a good idea.

But not all meat is equally implicated. Cutting back on red

meat is the most important and effective. To back up: In this

book, I consider “meat” to be flesh from land animals that we

eat—basically red meat plus poultry (chicken, duck, turkey,

etc.)—and “red meat” to be meat from mammals. Most com-

monly in our country, red meat means beef, pork, and lamb,

but the category can include goat, horse, veal, and mutton.

Poultry, fish, and seafood are of much lower concern for human

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