Diet for a Hot Planet

Book excerpt: Forty years after her mother's work changed the way we eat, Anna Lappé's Diet for a Hot Planet changed the way we think about food production and global warming. Fifty years ago, Frances Moore Lappé's Diet for a Small Planet sparked a revolution in thinking about the social and environmental impact of what we eat. Ten years ago, her daughter, Anna Lappé, controversially picked up the conversation with Diet for a Hot Planet, examining another hidden cost of our food choices: the climate crisis. Lappé predicted that food system-related greenhouse gas emissions would be catastrophic unless we radically shifted the trends of what we ate and how we produced it. She exposed the political interests with a stake in our food system, and foresaw the spin food companies would use to avoid system-wide reform. She visited the pioneering farmers of a future food system where good could outweigh harm, demonstrating the potential of sustainable farming. She also offered six eternal principles for a climate friendly diet. This measured and intelligent call to action is the perfect companion to the fiftieth anniversary edition of Diet for a Small Planet; like her mother before her, Lappé reminds us that food, and our perilously large food system, is still a powerful access point for solutions to the climate crisis.