When I began work on Food Matters in 2007, I had been writing about food for nearly thirty years. So I was in the press box while the American diet underwent huge changes, few of them for the better. Restaurants boomed – especially the fast food types – and people cooked less and less, while waistlines - and the health problems that accompany excess weight - were growing exponentially.

Yet despite my awareness, my own health had become a problem: I was 57, and 35 pounds overweight. My blood sugar was up, my cholesterol was up, I had sleep apnea, and I had just had knee surgery. My doctor unironically told me to become a vegan. I reminded him that I was a food writer and asked him if he was out of his mind. He reminded me that I was a smart guy and that this was serious.

“Figure something out,” he said.

I could have seen this coming; I’d just spent a couple of years working on How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, in part because I saw the writing on the wall. I knew a plant-heavy diet was a healthier diet, and I knew we'd all be eating that way eventually; I was just unwilling to make the change. Still, when my marching orders came down, I knew a lot about cooking without meat.

And there were further incentives: As if on cue, across my (virtual) desk came a paper from the United Nations called Livestock’s Long Shadow, a damning report about the connection between industrial livestock and global warming, which I can sum up very easily: The more animals we raise industrially, the more greenhouse gases we are producing. This study estimated that about 70 percent of all the land on earth is devoted to industrial livestock production, and generates 18 percent of our annual greenhouse gas emissions. More recently, analysts at an environmental organization called Worldwatch have reported that livestock and their by-products actually may account for as much as 50 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. (These numbers are debatable, but the point is this: industrially raised livestock is really bad for the environment. Not to mention the animals.) In the United States we eat almost 10 billion chickens, pigs, cows, and turkeys each year. And that’s just us!

That kind of settled it. If my own health as well the health of the entire planet could be improved by eating more plants and fewer animal products, it was time to start doing exactly that. Food Matters made the argument and began to sketch out how to tip the seesaw back towards plants, but now with the Food Matters Cookbook I’ve proven to myself (and hopefully to all who cook from it) that flipping the ratio in our “normal” cooking doesn’t feel like a sacrifice, and leads to some incredibly inventive and delicious food.

It's also led to better health for me (my doctor isn't yelling at me any more, and I'm running marathons again), and to a bunch of terrific recipes. Cooking like food matters can do the same for you.