The book that changed the way we eat
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2020
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The best selling book that highlighted the health and environmental benefits of a plant based diet. The publication of "Diet for a Small Planet" in 1971 helped start a conversation about the social and environmental impacts of the foods we choose. Frances Moore Lappé has been telling Farhana Haider about the writing of her ground breaking book.
Photo Cover of first edition, first print Diet for a Small Planet 1971. Courtesy of Frances Moore Lappé
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds Hello and thank you for downloading this edition of the Witness History Podcast with me for Hana Haida |
| 0:42.3 | and today I'm taking you back to 1971 and the publication |
| 0:46.9 | of one of the first books to highlight the environmental and health benefits |
| 0:51.0 | as a plant-based diet. I've been speaking to Francis Moore Lepey |
| 0:56.4 | about her book, Diet for a Small Planet. |
| 0:59.7 | You personally have a choice. You don't have to be a victim of advertising and product |
| 1:04.6 | placement in your supermarket. You can go in and choose what's best for you, what's |
| 1:09.8 | best for the earth. We could all eat in a sustainable way. The book went on to be a |
| 1:14.4 | bestseller and changed the way people eat. There were some reviews and my favorite |
| 1:19.0 | one was the Boston Globe. I loved it because the title said, |
| 1:22.2 | recipe for revolution and I thought oh that |
| 1:26.8 | fellow got it. In the early 70s France's more le pay had just finished a graduate program in social work at the University of Berkeley in California. |
| 1:37.0 | At the time, the world was facing a hunger crisis. |
| 1:40.0 | When people turned on the evening news, it was hard to escape images of famine. |
| 1:45.0 | It was also a time of rapid population growth. |
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