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F. Moore Lappe | 482 pages | 01 Feb 1992 | Random House USA Inc | 9780345321206 | English | New York, United States Small Planet Institute, Cambridge, MA

LAPPE: Men and women aren't going to be motivated to practice any form of birth control until they know that most of the children they do bear will survive! As it is now, the only way poor people can provide for their old age is to have several children who will care for them. People must be sure that they can meet their own basic security needs, and that the children they bear will have a reasonable chance to survive, before birth control can be considered a realistic option. Only then, when people have freedom from , can conscientious efforts to teach and encourage family planning be successful. Instead of thinking of countries as homogeneous units, we have to focus on the people who control the wealth in our society, and of those who control the wealth in the Third World. In most cases, the leadership in the Third World doesn't represent the people there. Even if those politicians were granted all the high-sounding concessions they ask for from the industrialized powers, the majority of their people would still go hungry. For instance, many leaders of underdeveloped countries push for better terms of trade for their exports. Well, suppose the price of coffee, say, goes up. If nothing else changed, the small farmers-individuals who were growing food for themselves—would be forced off their land so that richer growers could more and more coffee to take advantage of the export income. In fact, in many Third World countries the poor do best when prices for their nation's major crops are depressed. But once again, it's essential that we not oversimplify. In Nicaragua—which is genuinely attempting to redistribute land and wealth—coffee export income is used for basic development. So when coffee prices crashed recently, after that nation's government had heavily invested in the crop, it hurt the society as a whole. As impoverishment grows in the underdeveloped countries, there's more and more export. It's no longer a case of only the traditional tropical crops— such as bananas, pineapples, and coffee—being shipped out of Third World nations. Now, America gets one-half to two-thirds of its winter from Mexico. And , a basic, high-calorie root crop that poor people have survived on for decades, is now shipped from Thailand to Europe, where it's used as livestock feed. The U. And although not many people know it, much of the food we're buying from Third World nations is contaminated with dangerous pesticides like DDT. That's bad enough, but in poor countries—where people often get their drinking water from canals that contain pesticide runoff, where uneducated individuals can buy liquid insecticides in cola bottles, and where farm workers are sometimes sprayed from overhead planes by plantation owners who are breaking up union meetings—the poisons cause immeasurably more severe damage than they ever did here. And, of course, the export crops grown for sale to wealthy countries like ours tend to receive the largest doses of these pesticides, because consumers in industrial nations have come to expect blemish-free food. The biggest American food-processing firms—having reached a point at which they can't expect to keep increasing their food sales to this nation's public—are now finding a whole new market for their wares abroad. The urban elite in the Third World equate processed foods with modernization and westernization. Consequently, many of the items exported from the U. And, of course, the whole scandalous story of American firms pushing infant baby formula to poor people in the Third World—which has led to the malnourishment and death of millions of infants—is another example of our emphasis on processed food exports. What's more, our feed exports have gone up fourfold in the last decade. But since two-thirds of our total agricultural exports go to feed livestock, the effect is to encourage people in other countries to eat beef and other grain-fed meats. Thirty years ago, for instance, the average Japanese citizen ate almost no red meat. In countries where economic control is concentrated in the hands of a few, our aid strengthens the local and foreign elite. Thus, instead of helping the poor, our aid frequently hurts the dispossessed majority. Food shipments to Haiti, tube-well installations in Bangladesh, and programs to fund rural electrification and road building in Indonesia all get used to benefit those who already have power. At the institute, we've concluded that U. The first is the belief that it's possible to go through the powerful to reach the powerless. The second is that U. The sad truth is that we often use our aid to support repressive Third World regimes solely because they are our political allies. For instance, during the five years after President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines declared martial law in , our aid to that country increased fivefold. It's now the sixth largest recipient of U. And the Philippines are hardly alone. India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are among the ten countries that receive over one-third of all U. I learned much of what I know about the impact of our foreign aid programs during my years of study and work following the first edition of Diet for a Small Planet. For the past two years, though, I've been focusing primarily on the situation within the U. Indeed, that's one big reason why we shouldn't feel deadened by guilt about the plight of the hungry of the world. Those people aren't our enemies. LAPPE: One of the biggest parallels between our country and most underdeveloped nations is the increasing concentration of food control. Look at farming. The profit margin from crops is so thin by , real profits per acre had sunk to half what they were in that the only thing for farmers to do is, as Earl Butz put it, "get big or get out". And the key to getting big is to first own a lot of that valuable land. As agricultural economist Donald Paarlberg said, "We are developing a wealthy hereditary landowning class which is contrary to American traditions. Thus the farmers in the middle—since most of the smallest ones have managed to survive by means of off-farm income—are getting squeezed out of business. In fact, if two-thirds of America's growers tried to live solely on the sales of their crops, their income would be well below the official poverty line. Farmers are forced to compete against each other and to produce more and more, yet that same increased production depresses prices so that they have to produce more still in order to make the same income. There're always ways to get rid of the extra food, though: Half of our harvest is fed to livestock, and our agricultural exports have doubled in the last decade. But the pressures of steadily expanding production are leading to the destruction of food-linked resources. Increased monoculture planting of erosion-inducing crops has resulted in a constant loss of topsoil on more than a third of our cropland. Farmers have had to rely on irrigation to raise yields, and the added demand is draining the water from giant aquifers. And of course, more fertilizers and pesticides are needed to maintain maximum productivity under these deteriorating conditions. PLOWBOY: But if food production is increasing, surely somebody—besides the small minority of growers who are big enough to survive—must be benefiting. Here the concentration of economic control is even more extreme than it is in farming at this point. Take the largest trader, the Minneapolis-based Cargill Corporation, for example. Yet this firm, surviving on U. The company's major trading arm, Tradax, is chartered in Panama and based in Geneva. Cargill exports over a quarter of all the grain that leaves this country. And because the company has significant foreign operations as well, it actually competes with American farmers in order to keep farm prices down! Since World War II, our nation has lost half of all its food manufacturing businesses. And only 0. Consequently, in the , baby food, soup, and beer product areas, four corporations control over half of the sales. They have what's called a shared monopoly. Well, the chapter presents five or six possible plans—such as making more products to grab a bigger share of the market, creating consumer loyalty with a heavy advertising blitz, processing foods into "prepared" dinners in order to charge higher prices for the same ingredients, cutting costs by replacing substantial food ingredients with less expensive ones such as salt, sugar, and artificial flavors , and so forth—and then demonstrates that each moneymaking strategy leads to the creation of more additiveladen, less healthful food. The point is that one doesn't have to be an evil cutthroat to follow these steps. Indeed, Dr. Kellogg—founder of the giant corporation that bears his name—was a strict vegetarian. And the first creation of the man who launched General Foods was Postum, a coffee substitute devised to free us from the evils of caffeine. Simple, profit-maximizing logic led these and other once well-intentioned companies to take steps that were detrimental to consumers' health. LAPPE: Let me put it this way: To eat the typical American diet is to participate in the biggest experiment in human ever conducted. Americans are eating more fat, more sugar, and more salt than they used to-while taking in too many calories and too little fiber-and each of these changes has been linked to heightened risk of disease. The problem isn't that individuals are adding too much sugar, salt, and fat to their foods. Many Americans eat two or three times the recommended daily intake of salt without once wielding a saltshaker! And the average U. But these abused food ingredients are being added for us by the processing industry. Almost half the calories in a Big Mac or a Ritz cracker are fat. I'd like to get people to open their eyes and see the priceeconomic and otherwise— that we all pay for the food system we're tolerating. Consider just one recently created food, a pie filling that's made by liquefying whole , injecting sugar into it, and then re-forming it into perfectly shaped little berries or what have you! People here and abroad are starving, yet 60, such "new" food items—products that actually lose nutritional value as they're being processed—have been introduced in the U. Reduce your consumption of eggs, full-fat dairy products, and meats. It's really not difficult to develop a nutritious—and delicious—diet: People have been eating that way for thousands of years. This goal is a lot easier to achieve, of course, for folks who quit shopping in supermarkets and start using cooperative food stores and farmers' markets. PLOWBOY: I'm sure some people would be surprised that you recommend limiting the consumption of meat, but not eliminating it from our diet. If you want to eat meat, I recommend that you use it as the Chinese do, as a flavoring in a meal that's basically made up of vegetables. I understand, of course, that grain-fed meat is not the cause of the world hunger problem-and eating some of it doesn't directly take food out of the mouths of starving people-but it is, to me, a symbol and a symptom of the basic irrationality of a food system that's divorced from human needs. Therefore, using less meat can be an important way to take responsibility. Making conscious choices about what we eat, based on what the earth can sustain and what our bodies need, can help remind us that our whole society must begin to balance sustainable production with human need. One thing is certain: It would be impossible for everyone in the world to emulate the American meat-centered diet. Grain-fed livestock is such an enormous drain of resources that, in many ways, eating a prime steak is like driving a Cadillac. Consider this. Producing a one-pound steak uses up 2, gallons of water. Stephens Kim A. Clubb Charles W. Kress W. Howard Moore Reuben D. Vegetarian and vegan symbolism Vegetarian and vegan dog diet Semi- Macrobiotic diet Pollotarianism. Books portal Environment portal. Categories : non-fiction books Vegetarian Vegetarian-related mass media Ballantine Books books Dieting books Vegetarianism in the United States. Hidden categories: Webarchive template wayback links. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Modern researchers know that it is virtually impossible to design a calorie-sufficient diet based on unprocessed whole natural plant foods that is deficient in any of the amino acids. The only possible exception could be a diet based solely on fruit. Medical doctor and author John McDougall wrote to the editor pointing out the mistake. But in a stunning example of avoiding science for convenience, instead of acknowledging their error, Barbara Howard, Ph. Maybe you are not surprised by this misconception in the medical community, but what about the vegetarian community? Behind the Times Believe it or not, an article in the September issue of made the same mistake. But because these foods do not contain all of the EAAs, vegetarians have to be smart about what they eat, consuming a combination of foods from the different food groups. This is called food combining. A Dangerous Myth To wrongly suggest that people need to eat animal for proper nutrition encourages consumption of foods known to contribute to the incidence of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, many forms of cancer, and other common health problems. Get inspired! Our chefs add delicious new plant-based recipes every week to keep mealtime exciting and satisfying. Getting started on a plant-based diet or looking to refresh your eating habits? Download our practical guide to long-term success. Get free recipes and the latest info on living a happy, healthy plant-based lifestyle. 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We prepared this book—for review only—during the height of the Covid pandemic. We hope that publishing it initially on-line will make it easy for readers to weigh in to make it stronger. Then, in early , we will incorporate all your feedback and choose how best to publish the result. Email info smallplanet. The Boston Globe. Read the full Article! July 17, The Small Planet Institute is an exciting hub for rethinking democracy and finding our place in this historic movement. Frances and Anna are happy to join your event virtually! Both have experience speaking at events with online formats. Check out Anna and Frances' latest virtual event, that they spoke at together for Earth Day Small Planet Institute spreads an empowering understanding of democracy as the wide dispersion of power, transparency in public affairs, and a culture of mutual accountability. We call it Living Democracy, enabling each of us to act effectively on emerging solutions from electoral politics and economic life to the environment, hunger, agriculture, and beyond. Our goal is thus a future where all communities are thriving with dignity as Living Democracies, fulfilling our essential needs for personal power, meaning, and connection. So we seek to identify core, often unspoken, assumptions—economic, political, and psychological—now driving humanity to take our planet in directions that none of us individually would ever choose. Watch this inspiring film about the Democracy Movement! Learn more about Small Planet Institute! Mammoth social problems, especially global ones like world hunger and ecological destruction, paralyze us. Their roots seem so deep, their ramifications endless. So we feel powerless. How can we do anything? We try to block out the bad news and hope against hope that somewhere someone who knows more than we do has some answers. Schooled in the institutions of power, they take as given many patterns that must change if we are to find answers. Of this I am certain. But how do we make this discovery? Where do we begin when everything seems to touch everything else? Food, I discovered, was just the tool I needed to crack the seemingly impenetrable facade. To ask the biggest questions, we can start with the most personal—what do we eat? What we eat is within our control, yet the act ties us to the economic, political, and ecological order of our whole planet. Even an apparently small change—consciously choosing a diet that is good both for our bodies and for the earth—can lead to a series of choices that transform our whole lives. My tastes were manipulated. Feeling victimized, I felt powerless. But gradually I learned that every choice I made that aligned my daily life with an understanding of how I wanted things to be made me feel more powerful. As I became more convincing to myself, I was more convincing to other people. I was more powerful. So while many books about food and hunger appeal to guilt and fear, this book does not. Instead, I want to offer you power. Power, you know, is not a dirty word! At the same time, I learned that for every 7 pounds of grain and fed to livestock we get on the average only 1 pound back in meat on our plates. Of all the animals we eat, cattle are the poorest converters of grain to meat: it takes 16 pounds of grain and soybeans to produce just 1 pound of beef in the United States today. The final blow was discovering that much of what I had grown up believing about a healthy diet was false. Lots of protein is essential to a good diet, I thought, and the only way to get enough is to eat meat at virtually every meal. But I learned that, on the average, Americans eat twice the protein their bodies can even use. Thus, the final myth was exploded for me. I was shocked. And nutritionally it was all unnecessary! My world view flipped upside down. Most people think of our food-producing resources, soil and water, as renewable, so how can they be destroyed? The answer is that because our production system encourages farmers to continually increase their output, the natural cycle of renewal is undermined. Producing just one pound of steak uses 2, gallons of water—as much water as my family uses in a month! Livestock production, including water for U. Already irrigation sources in north Texas are running dry, and within decades the underground sources will be drawn down so far that scientists estimate a third of our current irrigation will be economically unfeasible. In some areas topsoil losses are greater now than during the Dust Bowl era. At current rates, the loss of topsoil threatens the productivity of vital farmland within our lifetime. To produce a pound of steak, which provides us with calories of food energy, takes 20, calories of fossil fuel, expended mainly in producing the crops fed to livestock. Corn alone uses about 40 percent of our major fertilizers. Our farm economy is fueled by a blind production imperative. Because farmers are squeezed between rising production costs and falling prices for their crops, their profits per acre fall steadily—by hitting one- half of what they had been in figures adjusted for inflation. So just to maintain the same income farmers must constantly increase production— planting more acres and reaping higher yields, regardless of the ecological consequences. And they must constantly seek new markets to absorb their increasing production. But since hungry people in both the United States and the third world have no money to buy this grain, what can be done with it? One answer has been to feed about million tons of grain, products, and other feeds to domestic livestock every year. Another, especially in the last ten years, has been to sell it abroad. Frances Moore Lappe: Diet for a Small Planet

Such individuals were able to profit and then to use that money to buy more acreage. In such a process, the majority of people end up with less and less land-or none at all-and they also lose jobs to the new equipment. Worse still, as they become increasingly impoverished, they lose even the power to be part of a strong local buying market. And when the peasants can't afford to purchase basic and and corn, food production becomes geared more and more toward providing luxury crops and meat for a small elite in the cities and-through exports-for people in other nations. Now this situation isn't part of a plot by cruel landowners to starve local people, yet the very processes that increase the food production in such circumstances also increase hunger! In our books, we discuss this trend, following it from the village to the national level. All this inequality is inefficient, too-as well as inhumane—because small farms actually produce more food per acre than do large ones. That's true in every country we've studied. Bigger is not better: antidemocratic structures are not very effective. That's a pretty startling idea. It's often said that I'm against technology or increased food production. But that's an oversimplification and thus not true. What matters is always who benefits from the new technology. For instance, consider the impact of biogasification units that convert animal waste to gas energy. Here's a small- scale "appropriate" technology that, on the surface, seems ideal for poor regions. There's a difference, though. The biogasification units in China are managed at the village level, so everyone in the area benefits from the new energy supply. But in India the devices are controlled by the few people who have the capital to invest in a unit and the animals to produce the needed waste. Worse yet, once the biogasifier is set up and running, all of a sudden dung has a price. Where before even the poorest people could gather that waste to use as fuel, it's now often valuable enough to be beyond their economic reach. So instead of helping everyone, the technology benefits some and harms others. PLOWBOY: I can't imagine anyone's disagreeing that there is great injustice in the manner in which food and power are shared in the world. But many people would still argue that the primary cause of hunger is simply the existence of too many people for the resources of our limited planet to serve. LAPPE: Then how do such individuals explain the fact that there is enough grain produced—right now—to provide everyone in the world with more than 3, calories a day. Even in Bangladesh, a country which is often considered a hopeless "basket case", locally produced grain alone could provide each person with over 2, calories a day. Likewise, during the infamous famine in the African Sahel region in the early 's, every country involvedwith the possible exception of Mauritania-produced enough grain to feed its total population. In fact, a number of Sahelian nations actually increased their production of such export crops as cotton, peanuts, and vegetables during this awful period. PLOWBOY: But if you feed poor people without limiting their birth rate, isn't it possible that you'll exacerbate, rather than improve, the situation? LAPPE: Men and women aren't going to be motivated to practice any form of birth control until they know that most of the children they do bear will survive! As it is now, the only way poor people can provide for their old age is to have several children who will care for them. People must be sure that they can meet their own basic security needs, and that the children they bear will have a reasonable chance to survive, before birth control can be considered a realistic option. Only then, when people have freedom from famine, can conscientious efforts to teach and encourage family planning be successful. Instead of thinking of countries as homogeneous units, we have to focus on the people who control the wealth in our society, and of those who control the wealth in the Third World. In most cases, the leadership in the Third World doesn't represent the people there. Even if those politicians were granted all the high-sounding concessions they ask for from the industrialized powers, the majority of their people would still go hungry. For instance, many leaders of underdeveloped countries push for better terms of trade for their exports. Well, suppose the price of coffee, say, goes up. If nothing else changed, the small farmers-individuals who were growing food for themselves—would be forced off their land so that richer growers could plant more and more coffee to take advantage of the export income. In fact, in many Third World countries the poor do best when prices for their nation's major crops are depressed. But once again, it's essential that we not oversimplify. In Nicaragua—which is genuinely attempting to redistribute land and wealth—coffee export income is used for basic development. So when coffee prices crashed recently, after that nation's government had heavily invested in the crop, it hurt the society as a whole. As impoverishment grows in the underdeveloped countries, there's more and more export. It's no longer a case of only the traditional tropical crops— such as bananas, pineapples, and coffee—being shipped out of Third World nations. Now, America gets one-half to two-thirds of its winter vegetables from Mexico. And cassava, a basic, high-calorie root crop that poor people have survived on for decades, is now shipped from Thailand to Europe, where it's used as livestock feed. The U. And although not many people know it, much of the food we're buying from Third World nations is contaminated with dangerous pesticides like DDT. That's bad enough, but in poor countries—where people often get their drinking water from canals that contain pesticide runoff, where uneducated individuals can buy liquid insecticides in cola bottles, and where farm workers are sometimes sprayed from overhead planes by plantation owners who are breaking up union meetings—the poisons cause immeasurably more severe damage than they ever did here. And, of course, the export crops grown for sale to wealthy countries like ours tend to receive the largest doses of these pesticides, because consumers in industrial nations have come to expect blemish-free food. The biggest American food-processing firms—having reached a point at which they can't expect to keep increasing their food sales to this nation's public—are now finding a whole new market for their wares abroad. The urban elite in the Third World equate processed foods with modernization and westernization. Consequently, many of the items exported from the U. And, of course, the whole scandalous story of American firms pushing infant baby formula to poor people in the Third World—which has led to the malnourishment and death of millions of infants—is another example of our emphasis on processed food exports. What's more, our feed grain exports have gone up fourfold in the last decade. But since two-thirds of our total agricultural exports go to feed livestock, the effect is to encourage people in other countries to eat beef and other grain-fed meats. Thirty years ago, for instance, the average Japanese citizen ate almost no red meat. In countries where economic control is concentrated in the hands of a few, our aid strengthens the local and foreign elite. Thus, instead of helping the poor, our aid frequently hurts the dispossessed majority. Food shipments to Haiti, tube-well installations in Bangladesh, and programs to fund rural electrification and road building in Indonesia all get used to benefit those who already have power. At the institute, we've concluded that U. The first is the belief that it's possible to go through the powerful to reach the powerless. The second is that U. The sad truth is that we often use our aid to support repressive Third World regimes solely because they are our political allies. For instance, during the five years after President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines declared martial law in , our aid to that country increased fivefold. It's now the sixth largest recipient of U. And the Philippines are hardly alone. India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are among the ten countries that receive over one-third of all U. I learned much of what I know about the impact of our foreign aid programs during my years of study and work following the first edition of Diet for a Small Planet. For the past two years, though, I've been focusing primarily on the situation within the U. Indeed, that's one big reason why we shouldn't feel deadened by guilt about the plight of the hungry of the world. Those people aren't our enemies. LAPPE: One of the biggest parallels between our country and most underdeveloped nations is the increasing concentration of food control. Look at farming. The profit margin from crops is so thin by , real profits per acre had sunk to half what they were in that the only thing for farmers to do is, as Earl Butz put it, "get big or get out". And the key to getting big is to first own a lot of that valuable land. As agricultural economist Donald Paarlberg said, "We are developing a wealthy hereditary landowning class which is contrary to American traditions. Thus the farmers in the middle—since most of the smallest ones have managed to survive by means of off-farm income—are getting squeezed out of business. In fact, if two-thirds of America's growers tried to live solely on the sales of their crops, their income would be well below the official poverty line. Farmers are forced to compete against each other and to produce more and more, yet that same increased production depresses prices so that they have to produce more still in order to make the same income. There're always ways to get rid of the extra food, though: Half of our harvest is fed to livestock, and our agricultural exports have doubled in the last decade. But the pressures of steadily expanding production are leading to the destruction of food-linked resources. Increased monoculture planting of erosion-inducing crops has resulted in a constant loss of topsoil on more than a third of our cropland. Farmers have had to rely on irrigation to raise yields, and the added demand is draining the water from giant aquifers. And of course, more fertilizers and pesticides are needed to maintain maximum productivity under these deteriorating conditions. PLOWBOY: But if food production is increasing, surely somebody— besides the small minority of growers who are big enough to survive—must be benefiting. Here the concentration of economic control is even more extreme than it is in farming at this point. Take the largest trader, the Minneapolis-based Cargill Corporation, for example. Yet this firm, surviving on U. The company's major trading arm, Tradax, is chartered in Panama and based in Geneva. Cargill exports over a quarter of all the grain that leaves this country. And because the company has significant foreign operations as well, it actually competes with American farmers in order to keep farm prices down! Since World War II, our nation has lost half of all its food manufacturing businesses. And only 0. Consequently, in the cereal, baby food, soup, and beer product areas, four corporations control over half of the sales. They have what's called a shared monopoly. Good read, but I think rather than updating DfaSP, she could have just written another book, a sequel if you please. Nov 14, Oksana Oriekhova rated it liked it. The situation of power concentration in the hands of a few is actual as ever and this gap continues to widen. As a result, most of the people do not dare to give their voice since there is always a thought that everything is already decided for all of us we want it or not. The version of the book I read is , which was written almost 30 years ago. But things have not significantly changed, most of those outlined by the author have become even worse. So, the point is to take responsibility for our own actions, especially when we talk about what is on our plate. Sep 01, April Dickinson rated it liked it. The overarching themes are possibly even more relevant today, but unfortunately, much of the facts and figures were way out of date. I mostly skimmed this one. Jul 02, Emmett Nolan rated it really liked it. I recently finished reading the 20th anniversary edition from my local library. As other reviewers have said, reading in chronological order causes you to have to read through the authors' life story. As for the main book, I found it to be very informative on the economic and environmental affects of meat production. However, I did wish that it also discussed some of the moral reasons for vegetarianism. It also contained a lot of information on the recent negative changes in the American diet an I recently finished reading the 20th anniversary edition from my local library. It also contained a lot of information on the recent negative changes in the American diet and their affect on their body, and how to have a good and healthy diet, which doesn't come as a big surprise given the title. Overall, I would recommend this book only if you're interested in reading about these topics. Oct 08, Josip rated it liked it. The whole point is really intriguing and simple. The book is about the revolution of eating more vegetables and less meat that started in the States in the s. I like the way the author represents her ideas, it's just that there is too much of the author's personal life, which makes the book kind of unprofessional and the tips lose their value. When writing a book like this, where you want to innovate or present something new to the world, I believe there should be decent research and clear f The whole point is really intriguing and simple. When writing a book like this, where you want to innovate or present something new to the world, I believe there should be decent research and clear facts given which are missing a lot of times. Overall, classic book to read for those of you that do not know anything about diet, why eating too much meat hurts the environment and our body, etc. Sep 13, Belinda Vidal rated it liked it. First published in the 70's. Most of these stats are from the early 90's when the revised edition was released. I dread to think what some of those numbers are now in Some ideas in this book I had never even considered, such as tube wells in a Bangladeshi village designed to benefit the poorest farmers becoming property of the villages richest landlord and other such examples of misused power from aid. I'd like to think a lot has changed in the time from when the book was first revised, ho First published in the 70's. I'd like to think a lot has changed in the time from when the book was first revised, however if anything I think probably an even bigger poverty gap. Would like a more recent update on some topics covered, but this is a very interesting read! May 27, Umi rated it really liked it. The recipes are a little too soy- and dairy-centric for me but they made me really nostalgic for the 70s-style vegetarian restaurants rip The Good Earth of my youth. Jul 26, Braaten rated it liked it. Having read the 20th Anniversary edition of this book, it's not clear to me what chapters were part of the original and what writing was added in this edition. I appreciate the author pointing to ineffective food policy as a driver of inequity; nationally and globally we have so many resources, but wealth gaps continue to grow. However, recommending activism through one's food purchases remains inaccessible for people living in food deserts, juggling multiple jobs, caring for others, etc. Ther Having read the 20th Anniversary edition of this book, it's not clear to me what chapters were part of the original and what writing was added in this edition. There was no acknowledgement that to shop with higher guiding principles in mind is a privilege. Jun 19, Diane rated it really liked it. A lot of new vegetarians today understand that eating low on the food chain is best for the planet, but many do not seem well versed in how to eat vegetarian and get all of their nutrition. Any diet that eliminates food groups can cause vitamin and mineral deficiencies that can lead to health problems. I found "Diet for a Small Planet" good at covering all aspects of vegetarianism. A classic read. May 14, Cindy rated it liked it Shelves: food. My very first vegetarian cookbook! It's all gotten a lot simpler since then. Lappe' was all scientific about getting enough of the right proteins as a vegetarian, and these days the experts just tell us to eat a colorful meal, as many colors as you can put on the plate even. For a first book it was inspirational. Jul 19, Katie rated it liked it Shelves: , food , women-writers. I was given the first version by an aunt who was vegetarian and read it cover-to-cover, and later used it as a guidebook for my forays into vegetarianism. I revisited this, the updated version some years after it was published, and still found it useful, not just for the recipes, but for the science and philosophy behind it. Some cookbooks are just for reference. This one is for reading. Jun 25, Lisa rated it liked it. I read this back in the 's and loved it, she was one of the earliest people to consider the cost of feeding grain to animals so we can eat more meat and the benefits of a meat-free diet. She looks at the economics of the food supply. I thought the newer edition would be more up-to-date, but this was quite dated. Sep 07, Cezar Andrici rated it it was amazing. A nice read. I am impressed by how many facts about how meat is bad for the environment where known since or before. Readers also enjoyed. Frances Moore Lappe--author of fifteen books, including three-million-copy bestseller Diet for a Small Planet --distills her world-spanning experience and wisdom in a conversational yet hard-hitting style to create a rare "aha" book. In nine short chapters, Lappe leaves readers feeling liberated and courageous. She flouts conventional right-versus-left divisions and affirms readers' basic sanity - Frances Moore Lappe--author of fifteen books, including three-million-copy bestseller Diet for a Small Planet --distills her world-spanning experience and wisdom in a conversational yet hard-hitting style to create a rare "aha" book. She flouts conventional right-versus- left divisions and affirms readers' basic sanity - their intuitive knowledge that it is possible to stop grasping at straws and grasp the real roots of today's crises, from hunger and poverty to climate change and terrorism. Because we are creatures of the mind, says Lappe, it is the power of "frame"--our core assumptions about how the world works--that determines outcomes. She pinpoints the dominant failing frame now driving out planet toward disaster. By interweaving fresh insights, startling facts, and stirring vignettes of ordinary people pursuing creative solutions to our most pressing global problems, Lappe uncovers a new, empowering "frame" through which real solutions are emerging worldwide. Escape the Present with These 24 Historical Romances. You know the saying: There's no time like the present In that case, we can't Read more Trivia About Diet for a Small Learn more about Small Planet Institute! Exciting News! We have built UDecide —a platform to share info about political campaigns! Black lives matter Small Planet Institute stands in solidarity with the Black community. Request Your Review Copy. More About the Book. So fear is inevitable, and, of course, it can ignite action that saves lives Subscribe Now! Life on the Edge. Frances' Upcoming Events. You have pesticides in your body.

The Myth of Complementary Protein Explained |

As I became more convincing to myself, I was more convincing to other people. I was more powerful. So while many books about food and hunger appeal to guilt and fear, this book does not. Instead, I want to offer you power. Power, you know, is not a dirty word! At the same time, I learned that for every 7 pounds of grain and soybeans fed to livestock we get on the average only 1 pound back in meat on our plates. Of all the animals we eat, cattle are the poorest converters of grain to meat: it takes 16 pounds of grain and soybeans to produce just 1 pound of beef in the United States today. The final blow was discovering that much of what I had grown up believing about a healthy diet was false. Lots of protein is essential to a good diet, I thought, and the only way to get enough is to eat meat at virtually every meal. But I learned that, on the average, Americans eat twice the protein their bodies can even use. Thus, the final myth was exploded for me. I was shocked. And nutritionally it was all unnecessary! My world view flipped upside down. Most people think of our food-producing resources, soil and water, as renewable, so how can they be destroyed? The answer is that because our production system encourages farmers to continually increase their output, the natural cycle of renewal is undermined. Producing just one pound of steak uses 2, gallons of water—as much water as my family uses in a month! Livestock production, including water for U. Already irrigation sources in north Texas are running dry, and within decades the underground sources will be drawn down so far that scientists estimate a third of our current irrigation will be economically unfeasible. In some areas topsoil losses are greater now than during the Dust Bowl era. At current rates, the loss of topsoil threatens the productivity of vital farmland within our lifetime. To produce a pound of steak, which provides us with calories of food energy, takes 20, calories of fossil fuel, expended mainly in producing the crops fed to livestock. Corn alone uses about 40 percent of our major fertilizers. Our farm economy is fueled by a blind production imperative. Because farmers are squeezed between rising production costs and falling prices for their crops, their profits per acre fall steadily—by hitting one- half of what they had been in figures adjusted for inflation. So just to maintain the same income farmers must constantly increase production— planting more acres and reaping higher yields, regardless of the ecological consequences. And they must constantly seek new markets to absorb their increasing production. But since hungry people in both the United States and the third world have no money to buy this grain, what can be done with it? One answer has been to feed about million tons of grain, soybean products, and other feeds to domestic livestock every year. Another, especially in the last ten years, has been to sell it abroad. The trouble is that, given the system we take for granted, this all appears logical. So perhaps to begin we must stop taking so much for granted and ask, who really benefits from our production system? Who is hurt, now and in the future? In this book I seek to begin to answer such questions. Home 1 Books 2. Read an excerpt of this book! Add to Wishlist. Sign in to Purchase Instantly. Members save with free shipping everyday! See details. Overview The book that started a revolution in the way Americans eat The extraordinary book that taught America the social and personal significance of a new way of eating is still a complete guide for eating well in the twenty-first century. Show More. Related Searches. As the undisputed queen of sensual romance, Bertrice Small brings history to life through indomitable As the undisputed queen of sensual romance, Bertrice Small brings history to life through indomitable women who live with wit, intelligence, and courage and who love with fierce delight. Now she sweeps us to a time and place of fiery With this method of eating, different plant foods are taken together so that their combined amino acid pattern better matches that required by our bodies, termed "net protein utilization". The general principle of combining foods for optimum net protein utilization combines adjacent pairs of the following: [dairy] with [] with [] with [seeds]. There is no need to combine foods at individual meals. This tradition can be seen expressed in three regions: [4]. The first edition, published by Ballantine , was sponsored by the Friends of the Earth organization. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Dewey Decimal. and vegetarianism. Vegetarians Vegans Fictional characters Vegetarian festivals Vegetarian organizations Vegetarian restaurants List of vegan media. List of vegetarian and vegan companies. Carol J. Adams Neal D. McDougall James E. Schwartz William O. Stephens David Sztybel Kim A. Clubb Antonio Cocchi Charles W.

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