Frances Moore Lappé - Diet for a Small Planet (1971)

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In exporting the Great American Steak Religion we are exporting a desire for the impossible. The earth could never provide the majority of its people with the grain-fed-meat-centered diet that Americans take for granted.

Frances Moore Lappé
For every 16 pounds of grain and soy fed to beef cattle in the United States we only get 1 pound back in meat on our plates. The other 15 pounds are inaccessible to us, either used by the animal to produce energy or to make some part of its own body that we do not eat (like hair or bones) or excreted.

Frances Moore Lappé
In a world where only a minor portion of the land is really well suited to agriculture, man is using much of the best land with dubious efficiency.

Frances Moore Lappé
Much agricultural land which might be growing food is being used instead to 'grow' money (in the form of coffee, tea, etc.).

Frances Moore Lappé
Our heavily meat-centered culture is at the very heart of our waste of the earth's productivity.

Frances Moore Lappé
Yet many Americans who have reluctantly given up their gas-guzzling cars would never think of questioning the resource costs of their grain-fed-meat diet. So let me try to give you some sense of the enormity of the resources flowing into livestock production in the United States. The consequences of a grain-fed-meat diet may be as severe as those of a nation of Cadillac drivers.

Frances Moore Lappé
The act of putting into your mouth what the earth has grown is perhaps your most direct interaction with the earth.

Frances Moore Lappé
We got hooked on grain-fed meat just as we got hooked on gas-guzzling automobiles. Big cars made sense only when oil was cheap; grain-fed meat makes sense only because the true costs of producing it are not counted.

Frances Moore Lappé
Honest hope has an edge. It's messy. It requires that we let go of all pat answers, all preconceived formulas, all confidence that our sailing will be smooth. It's not a resting point. Honest hope is movement.

Frances Moore Lappé