Frances Moore Lappé - Diet for a Small Planet

To see what is in front of ones nose needs a constant struggle.

George Orwell , 1946

I began this journey with the realization that growing and eating plant-centered diets was a great choice. Today it is a no-contest necessity: Either we now make a big turn, or life on Earth as we know it is gone forever.

Whoathis blunt declaration rocks me.

Ill admit its taken me decades to get here, and I am delighted now for this opportunity to share my learning journey with you, dear reader. Youll forgive me, though, if my first thoughts are of my own delight as, over the years, strangers have told me, Your book changed my life.

One story Ill surely never forget is from friend and long-time head of the Berklee College of Music, Roger Brown: I was teaching in a small village in Kenya in 1979 when I came across a tattered version of your book, he told me. I read it on a mountain by moonlight, and it changed the course of my life.

Im still smiling.

When anyone tells me of the books effect on them, I always want to blurt out, Yeah! Me, too. Diet for a Small Planet started as a one-page handout when I was 26, and it has profoundly shaped my lifes quest. Now, on its 50th anniversary, I strive to capture key lessons that help me to this day and that I hope will help you in these challenging times.

Hmm. Challenging doesnt quite do it. Over the past few years, we have been battling the fiercest storm of my lifetime: years of attacks on the integrity of our democracy leading to the first-ever citizens assault on the Capitol, a pandemic deemed the worst in a century, and murders by police that have fueled the Black Lives Matter movementfurthering, we can hope, our nations long-delayed reckoning with systemic racism.

At the same time, our climate crisis nears a tipping point that will drastically hasten destruction. And what first shocked me into actionhunger amid plentyhas gotten worse in recent years, even though the worlds food supply offers one-fifth more calories for each of us than it did 50 years ago.

But in a mighty storm, sometimes the biggest tree comes crashing down, and for the first time we can see its roots. Now is such a storm.

So how do we grasp the roots and use what we discover to pull ourselves back from catastrophe and guide us toward life itself?

The great news is that millions here in the United States and many more around the world are grasping the root causes of our intertwined crises and remaking their lives in ways aligned with what humans and nature need to thrive. Fifty years ago, my youthful ah ha was that food has special power, as every day our very personal food choices connect us to each other and to all of nature. Shock in discovering the needlessness of hunger triggered in me new ways of seeing whats profoundly amiss in our world and our own power to fix it.