We’ve all heard of meatless Mondays by now and may have even given them a try. If you’re an overachiever, you may have taken it one step further by including a vegan dish with your healthy lunch or dinner.

The vegan diet is plant-based and void of meat and animal products such as dairy, honey, and eggs. It takes commitment, but the health benefits are overwhelming.

A few headlining benefits of eating vegan include:

America has food backwards. The majority of our grocery shopping is done in a supermarket with the top items on our list being prepackaged, precooked, and processed foods containing little nutritional value. The produce we select has been shipped thousands of miles and treated with unnatural chemicals to keep the bugs away and to maintain its shininess on shelves.

Healthy foods such as raw nuts, fish, and organic produce are expensive, which limits many families from making healthy food choices. In fact, a study from the Harvard School of Public Health found that it costs $1.50 extra per person per day to eat healthy. That’s $550 more per year for a family of four.

Along with our lack of nutrition, Americans are funding large corporations who have little regard for families or the local economy.

We humans are everywhere, and like ants, have always scurried around our food sources. Unlike ants, however, our population has been booming and expanding for decades, reaching farther and farther away from our food.

Since industrialization, Malthusian’s theory kicked in, leading to problems that forced industrialists to discover ways to speed up food production, such as hormone injection and crop engineering. While industrialists solved the food shortage crisis, they lost credibility with consumers, simultaneously compelling them to seek new and more friendly food sources.

It’s time to think pre-industrial. When we farm or buy food from farms, we are not only supporting our local economy, we are receiving more nutrients from what we eat.

But why is food from local farms better?