One of the more difficult subjects for me to write about is diet, not because I lack experience, but because it tends to provoke defensiveness, denial, and debate. Still, I have to speak on it.
I’ve spent 15 years in the plant-based food industry. I’ve studied, written, and taught extensively on the subject. I authored The goodsugar Diet to support the nutritional philosophy behind my food business in New York City. So let me be brief, clear, and unapologetic: The human body is one of nature’s masterpieces. We’ve evolved into a dominant species not because of brute strength or sharp claws, but because of our brains, our adaptability, and our ability to manipulate the environment. Like other long-surviving species, jellyfish, sharks, turtles, we were designed to endure. But we are also fragile. We age quickly. We get sick easily. And most of our chronic suffering is self-inflicted, especially when it comes to what we eat.
We Are Not Natural Carnivores: Humans are hybrid herbivores. We can digest animal protein, but we were not designed to rely on it.
Our physiology makes that clear:
- We have long digestive tracts, ideal for extracting nutrients from fibrous plants, not rotting flesh.
- We lack claws and fangs. Our teeth are built for grinding, not tearing.
- We have poor smell and weak night vision. We weren’t meant to stalk prey in the dark.
- We tire easily after large, protein-heavy meals. Digesting flesh requires energy we don’t have to spare.
Carnivorous animals are built to kill and consume raw meat. We are not. Our ability to trap, slaughter, and mass-produce animal products is a product of intellect and desperation, not design.
We became meat eaters through circumstance, scarcity, migration, and survival, not because our bodies needed flesh to thrive. But once we tasted it, once we felt the power, the satiety, the addictive rush of dense animal protein, we were hooked.
The Biological Cost of Eating Animals: Animal protein is acidic and inflammatory. It lingers in the large intestine longer than plant food, feeding pathogenic bacteria. The byproducts of this breakdown, off-gassing toxins, enter the bloodstream just as nutrients do. Over time, this toxic load contributes to chronic inflammation, metabolic dysfunction, cellular stress, and premature aging. (Raw vegetation contains prebiotics and probiotics in a natural setting. Raw flesh may contain pathogens and toxins present in the animal's flesh at the time of its death. The only way we can consume flesh foods safely is due to the discovery and innovations of refrigeration and cooking.)
To maintain blood pH balance, the body goes into overdrive, stealing minerals, stressing organs, accelerating wear and tear. This is the hidden cost of eating the modern, meat-centric diet.
From Cleverness to Consciousnes: Everything about our evolution into meat-eaters is rooted in cleverness. But cleverness without compassion becomes cruelty. And our current food systems are built on industrial-scale suffering.
Billions of animals live in captivity, in pain, terror, and filth, so we can eat their flesh out of habit, vanity, convenience, and cultural conditioning. This is not a judgment. It’s a fact. And once we see it, we cannot unsee it.
Choosing a plant-based lifestyle isn’t just about health, it’s about harm reduction. It’s a conscious refusal to participate in needless suffering. When we change our diet, we begin detoxing from more than just cholesterol and sugar, we begin detoxing from violence, from generational programming, from speciesism.
The Shift Toward Compassion: Yes, switching to a plant-based diet can be hard. Yes, it’s even harder when you’re feeding children. Yes, it involves breaking subtle, inherited addictions. But it’s not impossible.
What we call “nutritional needs” are often just emotional habits wrapped in science-sounding excuses. If a nutrient is truly essential to the human body, it exists somewhere in the plant kingdom. If it doesn’t, we don’t need it, we want it. And that distinction is everything.
I don’t preach veganism. I practice it. Not because I’m perfect, but because I want to be honest. Honest with my body. Honest with my ethics. Honest with the planet.
This chapter sits within a larger conversation about non-harm, and diet is one of the most overlooked battlegrounds in that conversation.
For thousands of years, humanity has struggled with the tension between reverence for life and the instinct to survive. Ancient cultures ate animals out of necessity, during drought, famine, cold, and scarcity. Meat gave warmth, energy, and the illusion of strength. It tasted good. It worked, for a time.
But leaning into animal protein as the foundation of our diet was a critical evolutionary mistake. It pulled us further away from our role as custodians of life and into the illusion that we are apex predators, entitled to domination, consumption, and control.
We are not meant to be the destroyers of Earth or the industrial executioners of its creatures. We are meant to protect and preserve, to live in conscious reciprocity with all forms of life.
The last 500 years of human history, marked by conquest, colonization, and bloodshed, have been fueled by a lust for power, a glorification of violence, and a desperate, disembodied craving for control. And this does not come without a cost.
The cost is our own psyche. The cost is our children, traumatized by a culture that normalizes harm from cradle to college. The cost is our food system, which trains us from infancy to associate nourishment with suffering.
This ripple effect is not accidental. It’s the consequence of humanity being stuck in a chronic sympathetic nervous state, a perpetual fight-or-flight loop that drives us to dominate rather than connect, to consume rather than conserve.
To eat in a way that honors life is not just a dietary choice. It’s a spiritual declaration: I will no longer participate in unnecessary suffering. Not because I’m better, But because I’m aware of the issues and the science.
A whole-food, plant-based diet, free from processed junk, is a path toward clearer health, deeper compassion, and greater spiritual alignment with the direction evolution is trying to take us: away from harm, and toward harmony.
I could go miles deep into this conversation and the absurdity of the ‘paleo’, carnivore, and the keto diets. This is not the time and place.
That’s all I’ll say. I understand the resistance. But if you’re ready, start with awareness. Start with curiosity. Start with one honest meal.