2021-09-17 Diet for a Threatened Planet

Host: Greg Dalton

Guests:

Frances Moore Lappé, author, Diet for a Small Planet 

Anna Lappé, author, Diet for a Hot Planet

Analena Hope Hassberg, associate professor, Ethnic and Women's Studies Department, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Ruth Richardson, executive director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food 

Diet for a Small Planet is celebrating 50 years this fall. It’s been a hugely influential book in the environmental movement and has inspired countless people to adopt vegetarian diets. 

Author Frances Moore Lappé says the book was sparked by an “aha moment” that occurred when she was 26 years old and a graduate student at Berkeley, when headlines were reporting the world was running out of food.

“And the big ‘aha’ was, we are actively creating scarcity, the experience of scarcity, for millions and millions of people...There is plenty, plenty of potential for all to eat well and I just had to tell the world,” Moore Lappé says. Her book was critical of the environmental damage and wasteful nature of industrialized meat production and offered solutions for combating global food scarcity through a plant-centered diet. 

“Food has special power because we can’t buy a new solar panel every day, but we can choose what we put into our mouths every day,” Moore Lappé says. “It ties us to each other, to the Earth, to the climate...as we align those daily choices with the world that we want.” 

Her daughter and fellow food justice advocate Anna Lappé is author of Diet for a Hot Planet, focused on the food system’s connections to the climate crisis. Together they now focus on the intersections between democracy, environment, food, and justice. 

Anna Lappé says the consolidation of the industrial food systems and their influence on government regulations “makes it really hard for farmers to transition off of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers that are so bad for the climate, and that it makes it hard for everyday people to access the kinds of really nourishing nutrient-dense whole foods that we should all be eating.”

Analena Hope Hassberg is associate professor of Ethnic and Women's Studies at California State Polytechnic University whose research uses food to explore the racial, economic and structural factors that produce different health outcomes and life chances for residents in urban spaces. She’s also a contributor to the book, Black Food Matters. 

“We’re in this moment where activists and scholars are increasingly identifying the industrial food system as a major contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change, and so using food justice as a framework really centers the experiences of the people at the forefront of the climate crisis: low-income people of color that have historically been situated closer to environmental hazards, inundated by industrial food products and byproducts both here in the U.S. and abroad. [Food justice] situates them at the forefront of future solutions,” Hassberg says.

Related Links:

Diet for a Small Planet

Diet for a Hot Planet

Black Food Matters

Host: Greg Dalton

Guests:

Frances Moore Lappé, author, Diet for a Small Planet 

Anna Lappé, author, Diet for a Hot Planet

Analena Hope Hassberg, associate professor, Ethnic and Women's Studies Department, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Ruth Richardson, executive director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food 

Diet for a Small Planet is celebrating 50 years this fall. It’s been a hugely influential book in the environmental movement and has inspired countless people to adopt vegetarian diets. 

Author Frances Moore Lappé says the book was sparked by an “aha moment” that occurred when she was 26 years old and a graduate student at Berkeley, when headlines were reporting the world was running out of food.

“And the big ‘aha’ was, we are actively creating scarcity, the experience of scarcity, for millions and millions of people...There is plenty, plenty of potential for all to eat well and I just had to tell the world,” Moore Lappé says. Her book was critical of the environmental damage and wasteful nature of industrialized meat production and offered solutions for combating global food scarcity through a plant-centered diet. 

“Food has special power because we can’t buy a new solar panel every day, but we can choose what we put into our mouths every day,” Moore Lappé says. “It ties us to each other, to the Earth, to the climate...as we align those daily choices with the world that we want.” 

Her daughter and fellow food justice advocate Anna Lappé is author of Diet for a Hot Planet, focused on the food system’s connections to the climate crisis. Together they now focus on the intersections between democracy, environment, food, and justice. 

Anna Lappé says the consolidation of the industrial food systems and their influence on government regulations “makes it really hard for farmers to transition off of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers that are so bad for the climate, and that it makes it hard for everyday people to access the kinds of really nourishing nutrient-dense whole foods that we should all be eating.”

Analena Hope Hassberg is associate professor of Ethnic and Women's Studies at California State Polytechnic University whose research uses food to explore the racial, economic and structural factors that produce different health outcomes and life chances for residents in urban spaces. She’s also a contributor to the book, Black Food Matters. 

“We’re in this moment where activists and scholars are increasingly identifying the industrial food system as a major contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change, and so using food justice as a framework really centers the experiences of the people at the forefront of the climate crisis: low-income people of color that have historically been situated closer to environmental hazards, inundated by industrial food products and byproducts both here in the U.S. and abroad. [Food justice] situates them at the forefront of future solutions,” Hassberg says.

Related Links:

Diet for a Small Planet

Diet for a Hot Planet

Black Food Matters