Gourmets are often able to cite a personal epiphany, a moment of insight that irrevocably changed the way they looked at food. Often such stories involve France or Italy, an overachieving carafe of vin ordinaire and a budding romance.
In Mark Bittman's case, the mind-bending moment came two years ago, long after he had become a famous cook, when a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report titled Livestock's Long Shadow landed on his desk.
Mr. Bittman, the popular New York Times food columnist and author of several bestsellers, including How to Cook Everything, fixated on a statistic. Global livestock production accounts for one-fifth of all greenhouse-gas emissions - more than transportation.
"The global-warming thing was a catalyst," Mr. Bittman said by phone last week from Oregon, where he was travelling on business.
Like many people, Mr. Bittman had read about the ugly underbelly of animal and fish farming, its negative impact on food quality and human health. But now the planet itself seemed imperilled by meat.
The report also dovetailed with unsettling personal news. Mr. Bittman's cholesterol had risen above normal. So had his blood sugar, an ominous sign for a 57-year-old carrying extra pounds and a family history of diabetes. He had developed sleep apnea, too, a disruption in nighttime breathing often associated with blocked airflow. Decades of carnivorous indulgence had taken their toll.
He resolved to take action - by eating fewer animal products and more vegetables, whole grains and legumes. Not exactly an earth-shattering prescription, but Mr. Bittman says the UN report suddenly turned what had been an option into an imperative. "It's not sustainable to raise all the meat we raise now," he said. "No matter which way you raise it, it's not sustainable."
Devotees of his weekly column, The Minimalist, can read about his epiphany in Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating, a new book that might be described as part diet plan, part lifestyle manifesto and - the author being the author - part cookbook.
Showing a flare for concise writing and investigative reporting honed as a news journalist in his early years, he delivers a litany of haunting statistics in the first half of the book. For example, because of such inputs as petroleum-based fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, transport and drugs, "according to one estimate," Mr. Bittman writes, "a typical steer consumes the equivalent of 135 gallons of gasoline in his lifetime, enough for even some gas guzzlers to drive more than halfway from New York to Los Angeles."
It's much more efficient for humans to get their calories from plants than animals, he concludes.
Readers not persuaded by the ecological imperative might find a couple of other reasons in Food Matters for cutting back on crown roast and beefing up on broccoli. For one, animal welfare.
"It would be hard for most people to see the way that cows and pigs and chickens are treated," he says. "Why do dogs get such special treatment? They're not smarter than pigs."
As for human health, Mr. Bittman says scientists and nutritionists can split hairs over data in support of one ingredient or another, but one central truth is pretty uncontroversial: Eating less meat and refined carbohydrates, such as sugar and white flour, and consuming more plants is a good thing, certainly for the vast majority of carnivorous North Americans.
What's also clear is that "Big Food," as he calls the industrial food peddlers, often co-opt the latest magic bullets and nutritional buzzwords to pawn off otherwise nutritionally questionable food. A conspicuous example: "multigrain" cereals that are little more than a "box full of small cookies" with oat bran added. Smart eaters should take it all with a proverbial grain of salt.
"I'm here in Portland, [Ore.], and it's a running joke - all they're talking about is hemp," Mr. Bittman said. "So, what? Now you have to eat hemp seeds because your diet doesn't have any hemp in it? Last year it was flax seeds. Ten years ago it was oat bran. That's exactly what the big food companies want."
