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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.