MARK BITTMAN

The sad thing is, when it comes to diet, is that even when well-intentioned Feds try to do right by us, they fail. Either they're outvoted by puppets of agribusiness, or they are puppets of agribusiness.

Thanks to farm subsidies, the fine collaboration between agribusiness and Congress, soy, corn and cattle became king. And chicken soon joined them on the throne. It was during this period that the cycle of dietary and planetary destruction began, the thing we're only realizing just now.

The USDA is not our ally here. We have to take matters into our own hands, not only by advocating for a better diet for everyone - and that's the hard part - but by improving our own. And that happens to be quite easy. Less meat, less junk, more plants.

I'll never stop eating animals, I'm sure, but I do think that for the benefit of everyone, the time has come to stop raising them industrially and stop eating them thoughtlessly.

This evidence is overwhelming at this point. You eat more plants, you eat less other stuff, you live longer.

Let me pose you a question. Can farm-raised salmon be organic when its feed has nothing to do with its natural diet, even if the feed itself is supposedly organic, and the fish themselves are packed tightly in pens, swimming in their own filth?

Our demand for meat, dairy and refined carbohydrates - the world consumes one billion cans or bottles of Coke a day - our demand for these things, not our need, our want - drives us to consume way more calories than are good for us.

The current health crisis, however, is a little more the work of the evil empire. We were told, we were assured, that the more meat and dairy and poultry we ate, the healthier we'd be.

Were the workers who sweated to put food on my table paid at least minimum wage? Did they get health benefits? Overtime? Were they unionized? Protected from pesticide exposure?

We need to demonise soda, the way we've demonised cigarettes.

50-100 years from now we are all going to be eating a plant based diet. Whether that happens through a catastrophe or a peaceful sustainable life giving way is based on whether we make the right choices now and how we fight in this struggle together.

Anyone can cook, and most everyone should.

If you embrace moderation, eat whole foods instead of junk, live within your physical, monetary, and environmental budget rather than constantly exceeding it, you will lose weight, tread more lightly on the planet, and gain satisfaction from these things.

I'm not a vegetarian. Now, don't get me wrong - I like animals. And I don't think it's just fine to industrialize their production and to churn them out like they were wrenches. But there's no way to treat animals well when you're killing 10 billion of them a year. Kindness might just be a bit of a red herring. Let's get the numbers of animals we're killing for eating down, and then we'll worry about being nice to the ones that are left.

Keeping some calorie-dense food in your diet-whether it is meat, pasta, beer, or cake-allows you to reach satiety more quickly and easily. And this will keep you from feeling deprived.

We need real farmers who grow real food, and the will to reform a broken food system. And for that, we need not only to celebrate farmers, but also to advocate for them.

1 billion people in the world are chronically hungry. 1 billion people are overweight.

If price spikes don't change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.

We are already eating less animal foods since a few years ago, but we are still eating 8-9 billion animals per year.

If you're a progressive, if you're driving a Prius, or you're shopping green or you're looking for organic, you should probably be a semi-vegetarian.

People need help to change the way they eat... this is what government is for in my opinion.... We should make food an issue for everyone who runs for office.

Vegan or not, gluten-free or not, Erin McKenna's donuts are the best I've had in 20 years, without exception.

I got into cooking out of self-defense.

I think people at least now, as opposed to ten-15-20 years ago, kind of get it, what is the bad food. I think, before, there was a time when they didn't even get it that processed food was hurting them. Now, I think they get that, but the big enemies to switching over to good food are convenience.

Meatless Mondays is a dead-simple strategy. Anyone can do it, and it doesn’t require major sacrifice. Even if you eat a typical American diet replete with processed, junk and fast food the other six days of the week, going meatless on Mondays will still cut your carbon footprint, improve your health and reduce demand for factory-farm meat.