Your 'Pringle' contains 30% potato, that yoghurt has the same amount of sugar as ice cream, that whole grain cereal bar may be no better for you than a snickers.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.