‘Diet for a Small Planet’: Plant-Based Meat Has Roots in the 1970s

In her 1971 book “Diet for a Small Planet”, Frances Moore Lappé illustrated how more than 21 pounds of protein fed to a cow made just one pound of protein for people.

CLYDE HABERMAN: ‘More Americans than ever are eating plant-based meat, convinced that it is less harmful to them and less taxing on the environment…This slow but perhaps inexorable shift in food preferences is explored by Retro Report, whose mission is to focus on how the past influences present-day policies and customs. In this video offering, it turns to Frances Moore Lappé, whose 1971 best-selling book “Diet for a Small Planet” changed the way many people viewed global hunger in an era of rapid population growth. Ms. Lappé (pronounced Luh-PAY) concluded that there was plenty of food to go around.

The problem, she said, was one of distribution. Too much of it went to nourish animals on four legs rather than directly to those on two. “I just said, “O.K., I’m going to figure out are we really at the Earth’s limits — is that really the cause of hunger?” she told Retro Report. She took her father’s slide rule and “just sat there hour after hour literally putting two and two together.” Her bottom line: The world’s grain supply was “more than enough” to feed every human on the planet.

The inefficiency of a diet based on animal protein is evident in more recent studies as well. In one chart, Ms. Lappé illustrated how more than 21 pounds of protein fed to a cow made just one pound of protein for people. According to United Nations researchers, roughly 80 percent of agricultural land worldwide is used to sustain livestock… “We use 77 percent of our agricultural land in the world for livestock that gives us 17 percent of our calories,” Ms. Lappé, 76, told The New York Times Magazine in 2019…

Anna Lappé, like her mother a food writer and environmental activist, told Retro Report that her interests go deeper. The effects of food production on the world’s ecology deserve greater attention, she said. “I think the question should be not just is something meat or is not meat, but were pesticides used, toxic pesticides,” the younger Ms. Lappé said. “Were synthetic fertilizers that are incredibly energy intensive to produce? All of these questions go into essentially understanding what is the impact of the food we’re eating.” Her mother, meanwhile, is convinced that “there’s been enormous change in our culture around food since I wrote my book”.’  SOURCE…

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