plants

There’s growing interest worldwide in plant-based diets that skip — or at least scale back — meat and other animal products. But is it for the best?

My wife and I took a nature walk on the southern slope of the Santa Monica Mountains shortly after a brush fire had ravaged the earth and turned the blackened branches of the laurel sumac trees into hands that clawed at the darkening sky. It was a scene right out of Dante's Inferno, tempered by the…