[.ca] Diet for a Small Planet (20th Anniversary Edition) (ISBN 0345321200)

Isn't it ironic?:
I haven't seen this cookbook in years, but today I went into a "whole foods supermarker" to look for an item that isn't carried by my regular grocery chain, and seeing all the organic stuff carried me back on a nostalgic trip to the late 1970s. I was living in a group house on a farm-like piece of land, and my housemates and I were playacting at the hippie lifestyle. So, it was brown rice and tofu and compost heaps all the way, and this cookbook was a staple of the house. As I recall, the dishes that resulted from most of those recipes ended up tasting fairly foul, but we pretended it didn't matter; instead, we'd say that they tasted "earthy". hahaha. The premise of this book was that there were a very limited amount of resources on the earth, and by eating meat we Americans were consuming more than "our fair share", at the expense of others in the Third World. Well, we now know differently. There's more than enough food to feed everyone on earth (and the population has practically doubled in the last 30 years!). Sure, there are many people who are hungry, but that is largely due to political and economic circumstances. Instead, the most pressing public health issue worldwide is...Ta Da! AN EPIDEMIC OF OBESITY!! Who would have imagined it?? Certainly not all the shrill chicken-little types in the 60s and 70s who were screaming that we'd all be starving in the future, or at least eating Soylent Green. And we also know that protein is not even that necessary - certainly a portion is required in the diet, but too much is overkill, and is not needed by the body (or may even be harmful). So, forget about trying to make another extra serving of protein - instead, the healthiest thing to do is to refrain from consuming too many refined carbohydrates. Too much of anything is bad. Alfalfa sprouts - those used to be the "golden touch" of health food, but if you eat those in excess, it can cause health problems. (Just try to feed a cow an all-alfalfa hay diet, and prepare for a hefty vet bill!) Yes, this book is nice and quaint, but it's an anachronism. Oh, and forget about it being "cheap" to base your diet on a lot of dairy products - the prices on those are shooting through the roof now (mid-2004), and soon a hunk of plain domestic cheese will cost more than the equivalent amount of prime beef.

The more things change, the more they stay the same...:
I read this book in 1994. I was a vegetarian before I read it, but it inspired me to stay vegetarian. Here's the main reason why: as firs-worlders, we are oblivious to the chain of events that happen before our food gets to the grocery aisle. I was somewhat guilty of this. I say "somewhat" because my father was a hunter and I learned early on about the food on my plate and how it got there. However, I have step-children who have always lived in the country, on a hobby farm. They never made the connection between the cows in the field and the beef in the meat section, or the burger at Mickey Dee's. They can't tell pork from beef, from chicken, from veggie burgers. Country kids who don't understand where their food really comes from??!! To me, this was incredible. This book helped me teach my daughter and my step-kids where their food comes from, so that they have the information to make responsible choices according to their beliefs and ethics. It's always a good time to learn to make choices that sit well with one's personal beliefs and ethics. To me, this is the main focus of the book... whether you're vegetarian or not. This book taught me that I have to look beyond the packaging to the source. I have to be conscious of the origins of the food I feed my family. I have a responsibility to them, and myself, to stand up and choose what I will not put up with: multi-national exploitation, antibiotics in meat, industrial farming techniques, pesticide use, depletion of fertile farm land, deforestation, e-coli bateria in my veggies... The list never ends, it seems. These days, there is one food crisis after another: spinach, tomatoes, grain shortages... It's a little scary. Frances Moore Lappe was preaching green-local-vegetarian-organic long before it became an Oscar-worthy movie, or a mutual fund, or government strategy. She's probably sitting back and saying "I told you so!" to all those who thought she was exagerating. As an aside, there is one incorrect reference that's brought up in many reviews of Diet for a Small Planet. The author stated in the original book that legumes and grains combine to make a complete protein. Since that time, it has been proven that this is not the case, and Ms. Moore Lappe has corrected herself publicly, as well. If you're more interested in vegetarianism for reasons of animal exploitation, I'd suggest "Diet for a New America" by John Robbins.

Probably the best single book on things vegetarian:
At the time of the first edition, this book was the best thought out and researched of all. The concept of protein complements, among others, is crucial to making a vegetarian diet work for any length of time. I tried to work with several others, and still have their books which I use occasionally. This one has stuck we me over three continents and as many decades. In times when I wasn't totally vegetarian it still provided a welcome change and a reminder that I wasn't reliant on the local meat market. Of all the books this has the philosophy and practicality to stay with one as a viable guide to a vegetarian lifestyle. With this edition my wife and children have discovered, for quite different reasons (one from concerns about ecology, pollution, additives, GMOs, etc., the other from a more 'economic manipulation of peoples food habits' as well as nutrition) this book once again and found it as relevant now. They were thunderstruck to see my yellowed, fingermarked, and well-worn, copies with notes of variations I had tried. The beauty of the open-ended concept here is understated, but crucial. It has given us a stronger nutritional base as well as contributed to our growth as a family. For someone new to this area this contains some of the most sound nutritional, philosophical, and economic, reasoning I've seen in print. Over time it becomes quite easy to adapt conventional recipes to the methodology in this book. As a guide for your cuisine and your life it is very good indeed.

A case for free range - not vegetarianism:
I decided to read this book after reading about it in Peter Singer's "Practical Ethics". I thought that it was going to be a real cow hugging grass-munching type of book. Boy was I wrong. It turns out that this book is 98% multi-national corporation/ government/ modern ranching bashing. Her research is quite extensive and thorough. She makes a solid case for the need to change the way we do things. Unfortunately, after almost 35 years of being in print, the "revolution" spoken of on the cover hasn't managed to change much. Change of the type she wants usually only comes from one of two things, big money figuring that it can profit from the change or bloody revolution. Neither one seems near. In the 2% of the book where she talks about human biology, our nutrition and evolution, not only is it not well referenced, but also she gets it wrong. Now to be fair, she may have done her research on this in the 60's and has just not bothered to follow up. Also, some of the modern research has been published well after the book. Still, there was enough information out there beforehand for her to have studied further. Her statement that we evolved living on mostly plants is absolutely false. Anthropologists and archaeologists can tell us three things about prehistoric humans. First is that by changing our diet to mostly meat, we were able to grow our brains. Second is that the tools they find in early human and pre-human sites are all for processing of meat. Finally, it is easy to tell the difference between pre and post agricultural settlements. Before agriculture humans were taller, had healthier bones and no cavities. When it comes to diet, two recent studies of the Atkins diet have shown that a high protein, high fat, low carb diet not only helps you loose weight faster, but keeps your cholesterol down too. All in all high on complaining, low on solutions. However, in light of some of her facts and the recent mad cow scare, I am thinking of switching to free range beef.

Help I need the Dummies Guide to 'Diet For a Small Planet'!:
The idea of eating less meat has always appealed to me. I found this book in hopes of learning how to find other sources of protein. I just wanted a book to tell me some easy to read guidelines, all I found in this book was a lot of big words. You have to have a PHD in nutrition to read it. The more I read the more confused I got. This book is NOT for the casual reader.