TO BE FAIR, THAT’S BECAUSE YOUR BODY NEEDS MEAT: She wrote vegan cookbooks. Then she started craving burgers.

A doctor’s visit revealed that Jamieson was severely anemic. Despite being a trained chef and doing everything “within the vegan framework” to make sure she was getting enough vitamins and minerals — “I’d written books about it. I knew what you were supposed to do,” she says — including cooking with cast iron pots and even getting intravenous iron infusions, it wasn’t enough. “I was like, this is crazy. This is not sustainable. And this is not how humans are supposed to stay healthy,” she says.

So, after 10 years of being a vegan, Jamieson’s red meat dreams became a reality: She bit into a burger. “It was delicious,” she says. “It was like heaven. My body was like, Oh my God, thank you.”

Helen was a vegetarian before her heart attack, after which she said “screw it, I’m eating meat.” I took her to Morton’s in Nashville for her first steak and her reaction was simillar. I remember her saying “what the hell was I thinking?” after her first bite.