Today, Eddie Huang—restaurateur, author, and former host of Viceland’s food travel show Huang’s World—vowed to go vegan. Huang took to Instagram to explain that while he formerly liked to consume animal products, he no longer wanted to partake in the environmentally destructive practice after watching videos of the wildfires currently burning in Brazil’s Amazon region—which environmentalists say were started by cattle ranchers to clear land for beef production.

“I’m going to go vegan because it takes 20 times less land to feed a vegan than a meat eater, and over 90 percent of the land cleared in the Amazon rainforest since 1970 is used for grazing livestock, but if all of us just stopped eating beef it would solve huge problems,” Huang captioned a photo of what he said was his last meal of corned beef at NYC’s Junior’s restaurant. “Eat fish, eat chicken, eat pork until the next crisis but if all you can do now is quit beef, please do it.” Huang explained that veganism is often inaccurately categorized as “some uppity white girl thing,” and pointed to a variety of cultures that follow vegan lifestyles such as Asian Buddhists, Ital Rasta, and sects of the Hindu religion. “[Veganism] is not some new age thing to laugh at,” Huang said. “We are getting back to roots, healing the earth, and ourselves.” Huang pleaded with his followers to reconsider their diets, as well, stating, “Take a moment, think about it, and reexamine your relationship with food because it’ll make the earth and ourselves very, very sick if we keep abusing it.”