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Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe: Diet for a Hot Planet

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Date and time
Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe, a mother and daughter pair who have revolutionized the way we think about food, hunger, and climate change discuss Anne Lappe's new book, *Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It*. In 1971, Frances Moore Lappe's *Diet for a Small Planet* sparked a revolution in how we think about hunger, alerting millions to the hidden environmental and social impacts of our food choices. Now, nearly four decades later, her daughter, Anna Lappe, picks up the conversation. In her groundbreaking new book, the younger Lappe exposes another hidden cost of our food system: the climate crisis. While you may not think "global warming" when you sit down to dinner, our tangled web of global food--from Pop Tarts packaged in Tennessee and eaten in Texas to pork chops raised in Poland, with feed from Brazil, shipped to South Korea--contributes to as much as one-third of the global warming effect. Livestock alone is associated with more emissions than all of the world's transportation combined. Move over Hummer. Say hello to the hamburger. If we're serious about the climate crisis, says Lappe, we have to talk about food. In this groundbreaking book, Lappe exposes the interests resisting this conversation and the spin-tactics companies are employing to defuse the heat. She also offers a vision of a food system that can be part of healing the planet--and the climate. Lappe explores how food can be a powerful entry point for tackling our most pressing environmental problems. With seven principles for a climate-friendly diet and success stories from sustainable food advocates around the globe, Lappe offers strategies and inspiration to bring to life food that's better for people and the planet.

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Anna Lappe is a national bestselling author and sought-after public speaker, respected for her work on sustainability, food politics, globalization, and social change. Named one of Time's "eco" *Who's-Who*, Anna has been featured in *The New York Times*, *Gourmet*, *O: The Oprah Magazine, Domino, Food & Wine, Body + Soul, Natural Health*, and *Vibe*, among many other publications. She is the host for MSN's *Practical Guide to Healthy Living *and is a co-host for the public television series, *The Endless Feast*. She has written two previous books, *Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet,* co-written with her mother Frances Moore Lappe, which chronicles courageous social movements around the world, and *Grub:* *Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen*.
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Frances Moore Lappe was born in Pendleton, Oregon. A graduate of Earlham College in Indiana, she was a 26-year-old trusting her common sense when she began the research that led to the publication of Diet for a *Small Planet (1971)*, a book which sold over three million copies and changed forever the way people think about food. Her little book showed that human practices, not natural disasters, cause worldwide hunger. Food scarcity results when grain, rich in nutrients and capable of supporting vast populations, is fed to livestock to produce meat which yields only a fraction of those nutrients. In *Food First; Beyond the Myth of Scarcity (written with Joseph Collins, 1977)* she went on to identify other causes of starvation: centralized control of farmland and economic pressures to produce cash crops rather than basic food products. A passion for the democratic process infuses her work as a co-founder of two national organizations: the Institute for Food and Development Policy based in California and the Center for Living Democracy, a ten-year initiative which encourages regular citizens to contribute to problem-solving in all dimensions of public life. In 1987 Lappe became the fourth American to receive the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the Alternative Nobel, for her vision and work healing our planet and uplifting humanity. In 2002 Lappe and her daughter, Anna, published *Hope's Edge; The Next Diet for a Small Planet.* Like other visionary leaders, Lappe sees hope as something to be lived not sought after: A lot of people think we find hope by marshaling evidence and proving there is grounds for it. But hope isn't what we find in evidence; it's what we become in action. It is not surprising, then, that her next book is called *Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear. *
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