I think back to when I was growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, in the 1950s, during the [John] McCarthy era, with two parents who founded a Unitarian Church. We lived in a little frame house, and my bedroom was just down the hall from the kitchen. My favorite memories of childhood are of the smell of coffee wafting into my bedroom as my parents and their friends talked about the big, important things - about racism and about how to move our country to live its values.

We evolved to be problem-solvers, to create, to be choosers of our own future!

Humans need to feel effective - to feel that we can "make a dent," as he puts it. So the art of living is to find expressions appropriate to our own uniqueness in which we can experience effectiveness.

I understand, of course, that grain-fed meat is not the cause of the world hunger problem - and eating some of it doesn't directly take food out of the mouths of starving people - but it is, to me, a symbol and a symptom of the basic irrationality of a food system that's divorced from human needs. Therefore, using less meat can be an important way to take responsibility. Making conscious choices about what we eat, based on what the earth can sustain and what our bodies need, can help remind us that our whole society must begin to balance sustainable production with human need.

The act of putting into your mouth what the earth has grown is perhaps your most direct interaction with the earth.

The spirit that I am advocating is reframing how we view the world, and shifting from the negativity of lack and "not enough" to the positive frame of aligning with Nature.

Making conscious choices about what we eat, based on what the earth can sustain and what our bodies need, can help remind us that our whole society must begin to balance sustainable production with human need.