I grew up in a household of very loud, opinionated people. There were hardcore conservatives and what my father called "bleeding heart liberals" among us and everyone was at each others' throat vying to make their point. I always remember gearing up for what I knew would be a test...

If ever there was a book that could profoundly affect our lives at the most fundamental level, this one is it. I loved Jonathan Safran Foer's novels (Everything is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close); they were glorious to read and get lost in. But his new non-fiction kindles something...

"If the truth be known coronary artery disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never, ever exist and if it does exist it need never, ever progress."

So says Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who was a researcher and clinician at the Cleveland Clinic for over 35 years. In 1991,...

I've been researching the most common and devastating diseases Americans are dealing with, with the aim of finding a common thread running throughout both cause and reversal. As it is now, one out of every two of us will get cancer or heart disease, and one out of every three...

I have been working closely recently with a few extraordinary nutritional researchers, and I find that the information they have compiled is quite eye opening. Interestingly, what these highly esteemed doctors are saying is just beginning to be understood and accepted, perhaps because what they are saying does not conveniently...

I have high criteria for eating out. I want food that will keep me healthy and nourished. I want to feel like I'm doing the right thing by the environment. I really want to know that I'm sticking to my ethics of eating kindly and non-violently. As you...

I love a practical solution, especially when it's good all around - for personal health, the environment, and for living consciously. So when I received an email from Chris Elam, the director of the Meatless Monday campaign - a project of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health...

Going through the comments of some of my recent posts, I noticed the frequently stated notion that eating meat was an essential step in human evolution. While this notion may comfort the meat industry, it's simply not true, scientifically.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus at Cornell University and author...

Dateline: June of the year 2109, in a high school social sciences class in Boise, Idaho.

Teacher: Good morning class. Today we are remembering what life was like in the days of Barack Hussein Obama, the first African American President of the United States. As you all know, President Obama...

I've been catching up on my magazine reading and I came across a fascinating piece in a recent issue of New Scientist, which is usually a few steps ahead of the non-scientific press. It is a serious journal - not given to hyperbole - for scientists, although it does...

Are we killing ourselves?

There has been a lot of talk in recent days about how factory farmed animals are the cause of the deadly hybrid virus that is eerily mutating, and some are calling it cosmic retribution, a sort of "chickens coming home to roost" scenario. I...

My first post on the effect of eating meat on the environment provoked quite a bit of discussion, so in honor of Earth Day, I thought I should follow up with more information about how our natural resources (e.g., air, water, and soil) are depleted and devastated by animal agriculture....

Nicholas Kristof's column on Wednesday discusses the recent work by animal activists on behalf of chickens and pigs, and the degree to which "animal rights are now firmly on the mainstream ethical agenda" in the United States, as they have been for some years in Europe. I am delighted...

I've written extensively on the consequences of eating meat - on our health, our sense of "right living", and on the environment. It is one of those daily practices that has such a broad and deep effect that I think it merits looking at over and over...

We've known for more than a decade that the key to weight-loss is to consume fewer calories than you're burning--in other words, eat less, exercise more, or both. That dietary adage was confirmed last week by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, with a widely reported study in...

If you could peer into a giant factory farm where animals are mass produced and then killed to become our food, you might wonder how we, as a decent and humane people have arrived at this place. What you would see is this:

1. Egg laying hens, crammed by the...

Maybe it's because I'm worn out by the political bickering and the worrisome news about the market being in a tailspin, but I just clicked on a link to a breaking story about pigs being tormented, raped, and beaten in an Iowa slaughterhouse. I normally protect myself from seeing...

For people living in Louisiana's Gulf Coast, waiting for Gustav to bear down on them has been pretty alarming. Earlier in the year we watched in disbelief as the Midwest suffered severe flooding which enveloped whole towns and nearly wiped out much of the already strained corn and soy supplies;...

If you're wondering about the recent articles claiming that a study found that high-protein diets help lose weight and drop cholesterol, please take a closer look. First, the "low fat" diet that was compared to the high-protein one in this study was a full 30 percent fat, which is not...

When I tell people that I'm a vegan, the most popular question, by far, inevitably follows: "But, how do you get enough protein?"

There it is again, I think, the meat industry's most potent weapon against vegetarianism--the protein myth. And it is just that--a myth.

In fact, humans...