"Rise up nimbly
And go on your strange journey
To the ocean of meanings.

The stream knows
It can't stay on the mountain.
Leave and don't look away
From the sun as you go,
In whose light
You're sometimes crescent,
Sometimes full."

-Rumi

The following is a particularly straightforward and shocking (to me, anyway) passage from Vegan Freak by Bob Torres and Jenna Torres.

The nobility of yesteryear and the person eating the Standard American Diet (SAD) in today's Western society have something in common -- they both suffer from what are known as diseases of affluence. These diseases -- which include cancer (especially breast, prostate, pancreas, colon), obesity, heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), high cholesterol, osteoporosis, diabetes, kidney stones and kidney failure, macular degeneration, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and other auto-immune diseases like lupus, and more -- are only found in populations that eat meat and dairy at the rate found in the SAD. Today's societies that rely on a plant-based diet have very few occurrences of these diseases.

(All claims and information are thoroughly referenced and footnoted in the text. I left the tiny numbers out because I'm lazy. And you can go read the book, anyway.)