My name is Dr Michael Klaper. How I came to favor a plant-based non-violent lifestyle was the convergence of a number of forks that happened in my early 30s.

I had done my medical training in Chicago at Big Battle Cook County Hospital where I exposed to massive amounts of trauma — shootings and stabbings and shotgun blasts. And I knew I wanted to eliminate the violence in my life as much as I possibly could.

And I had been reading the works of spiritual writers on non-violence — Mahatma Gandhi and various Indian saints. And while pontificating one night to my friend about wanting to remove theviolence in my life over a steak dinner, he astutely pointed out that "if you want to eliminate the violence in your life, you might start with that piece of meat on your plate. Because your desire for flesh in your mouth is paying for the death of that animal." And as soon as he said that, a little voice on my shoulder said, "you know, he's right!"

And it didn't take long before animal flesh and dairy products exited my diet when I found out the truth of dairy. And it wasn't longer after that that I looked at my leather shoes and leather belt and saw that was no longer acceptable, so i dug a hole in the backyard and buried them, had a funeral for them. And i have been a committed vegan ever since.

At the same time, I was on the anesthesia service at a teaching hospital, putting people to sleep every day and watching surgeons open up their arteries and pull out this yellow greasy gunk out of their arteries, which is basically the fat of the animals these people are eating. And my dad died of clogged arteries; I knew I was gonna end up on that operating table with that ?? going on my chest. I said, "I'm going to create a different fate for myself."

And all these forces were converging. It became very evident that a plant-based diet was not only the way that I was going to practice medicine; it was going to be the way that I lived my life. And I'm very happy, glad that I passed through that transformative chapter. And everything in my life has been different and better ever since.