I am trying to eat much less processed food.

The agribiz and its enablers will win when we do nothing.

As for weight loss… I lost 187 pounds eating lots and lots of animal foods and very little plant foods. I think it depends very much on your own individual body type and physiology, what will work for someone. I eat meat and eggs — sustainably raised, grass fed, pastured — at every meal. I do also eat vegetables, far more so than I used to in my carb-crazy days in fact, but the majority of my calories come from fat. Healthiest I’ve ever been, and I’ve kept that weight off now for more than 6 years.

“After all, antibiotic use in animal agriculture makes sense primarily because of how we crowd and transport our creatures. Remove the antibiotics and more animals will surely get sick in the short term. But long-term, that only means that the animal agriculture industry will be forced to reform how it houses and ships its widgets.”

Which reminds me that arguing that puppies aren’t livestock in talking about puppy-mills doesn’t mean that livestock deserve to be treated like widgets, either.

Concentrated animal feeding operations (a/k/a “factory farms”) are bad for us (and to our pets who eat out of the same food supply), cruel to the livestock, use too much fossil fuel, turn excrement from a potential fertilizer into a lethal lagoon.

I’m not anti-meat. My dogs and cats are carnivores, and I’m an omnivore. But we have to stop thinking thinking cheap meat through environmentally unsustainable animal cruelty is our birthright.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” says the author Michael Pollan. Good advice for us omnivores. Choose your “unplants” from sources that practice humane and sustainable animal husbandry and you’ll be part of the solution, not a supporter of the problem.

Serious bonus: Since I started doing this some 18 months ago, I’ve lost 40 pounds and three sizes. And since I made the shift away from eating out and processed convenience food at the same time, I spend LESS on food overall. (Not to mention: The VERY occasional steak from sustainable and humane sources tastes even better, and not just because it DOES taste better when it’s grass-fed, not corn- and antibiotic-stuffed.)

Screw corporate agribiz and its enablers. This is not an “elitist” “foodie” issue. This is about our health, animal welfare and the environment. Change your diet, change the world (and save money, too).