Whoopi Goldberg recently defended her right to eat bacon, saying, “I like bacon. I want bacon. No one should tell me that I can’t have something. I want choice over my body.” Her comment captured something many people feel: food is personal, intimate, and tied to autonomy. But her remark also revealed a deeper paradox of modern life. We talk about food as if it exists in a private, sealed container—yet the way we produce it shapes the lives of billions of humans, trillions of animals, and the health of the planet we all share.

Most people who eat animals do not do so out of malice. They’re following cultural norms, family traditions, or simply the path of least resistance. And they are right, at least in a narrow sense: what we choose to eat is our decision. But these choices do not occur in a vacuum. They travel outward—into forests and oceans, hospitals and insurance markets, and into the lives of people who care deeply about animals, the climate, and public health. The idea that eating animals is a purely private act collapses the moment we examine the world it requires.

Start with the environment. The science on this is robust and bipartisan: animal agriculture, especially beef and dairy production, is among the most environmentally destructive systems humans have created. Vast stretches of the Amazon—one of the most biodiverse places on Earth—have been cleared or burned primarily to grow feed crops for cattle or to graze them. This isn’t an abstraction. When forests burn, species disappear, and carbon is released into the atmosphere, the effects ripple far beyond national borders. They reach coastal cities battling rising seas, farmers reckoning with drought, and families rebuilding after climate-amplified hurricanes.

The pollution footprint is massive as well. Industrial livestock operations produce more waste than many U.S. cities, yet without the infrastructure that cities use to treat sewage. Communities near these facilities—often low-income or Black, Latino, and rural white communities—bear the brunt of contaminated water and toxic air. And commercial fishing, which can feel like a more “natural” alternative, is emptying oceans, tearing up coral reefs, and collapsing ecosystems on which coastal economies depend.

Then there are the animals themselves. You don’t need to believe animals are equal to humans to acknowledge that they experience pain, stress, and fear. Many people care about the wellbeing of animals they have never met—farm animals included—just as they care about strangers whose suffering they will never personally witness. For these people, the knowledge that billions of sentient beings live and die in conditions that would horrify us if they were dogs or cats is not an abstract ethical puzzle; it is grief. And while you may not share that emotional response, the impact on those who do is real.

The consequences show up in another place too: the doctor’s office. The United States spends more on healthcare than any nation in the world, yet rates of diet-related diseases—heart disease, diabetes, hypertension—remain astonishingly high. Large healthcare systems, including Kaiser Permanente, now encourage doctors to recommend plant-based eating as a frontline tool for prevention and treatment. If more people ate plant-based food, not as a moral performance but as an ordinary habit, millions of cases of chronic disease could be reduced or avoided. And when fewer people require expensive medical interventions, everyone’s premiums and copays fall. Food choices have a way of becoming everybody’s bill.

None of this means people should be shamed for what they currently eat. I ate animals until I realized that my plate reflected systems that contradicted my values, harmed the environment, and made other people’s lives harder. Changing my eating habits was about alignment.

We’re living in a moment when new options exist—foods that taste familiar, cost less than they once did, and bypass many of the harms built into animal agriculture. The transition doesn’t have to be all or nothing. But it does require honesty: what we eat is not a private matter sealed off from the world. It has a massive ripple effect.

The author John Robbins once wrote that “it always matters what you eat.” Not because someone is watching, but because our choices accumulate into the kind of world we leave behind. The question isn’t whether we have the right to eat whatever we want. We do. The question is whether we are willing to expand our definition of “we” in a way that includes the planet, the animals in our care, and the people who pay the costs of our decisions.

The more honestly we answer that question, the more clearly we’ll see that the future of food—our shared future—depends on our willingness to choose with compassion, rather than habit.