It's never been truer that we are what we eat.

• Joseph ErbentrautSenior What's Working Editor, The Huffington Post

The next time you’re at a dinner party and someone identifies themselves as a climatarian, don’t look shocked.

Climatarians just had a big year. The term, referring to an individual whose diet is geared toward reducing the effects of climate change, was named by the New York Times as one of the 10 most interesting new food words of 2015, among a glut ofoccasionally bemused media attention, including from this outlet.

Biba Hartigan believes it is with good reason that climatarian seems to be catching on.

Hartigan is a co-founder of the London-based Climates, a fledgling international social network which introduced the climatarian diet, which essentially consists of cutting out beef and lamb, last July.

She says the term is taking off because the environmentally conscious have been yearning for a way to tackle carbon emissions, an issue that seems massive, in a meaningful way that is both simple and more precise to communicate to others when compared to more familiar terms like flexitarian or part-time vegetarian.

“The climatarian message is so simple that people grasp the idea and think, yep, this is something I can do. It’s a very simple shift,” Hartigan told The Huffington Post of the climatarian diet. “Reducing your intake of meat is a difficult concept for people to deal with. What we’re aiming for with this is making it very clear, simple and easy.”

Climatarian is just one of several new terms -- or micro-identities -- eaters are coming up with to describe their increasingly specified diets beyond the more straightforward distinctions of carnivore, omnivore or herbivore. There are locavores and Paleo enthusiasts, fruitarians and, here's another rookie, reducetarians.

Brian Kateman is a co-founder and president of the New York-based Reducetarian Foundation, an education and research nonprofit established last year.

According to Kateman, reducetarians are individuals who are dedicated to cutting back on their meat intake. 

That message is resonating. Kateman says thousands of people have already signed onto a reducetarian pledge on the foundation’s website. A TEDx talk he gave on the subject has been viewed nearly 100,000 times on YouTube.

While some reducetarians may share climatarians’ environmental concerns, he described the community he has spearheaded as being agnostic when it comes to motive. 

Read the full article here.