On March 8, 2023, we were honored to host legendary writer and activist Frances Moore Lappé, who revolutionized our thinking about food and politics with her bestselling and influential book, Diet for a Small Planet, and then, more recently, with Daring Democracy: Igniting Power Meaning and Connection for the America We Want (co-authored with Adam Eichen).
In her conversation with John Torpey, director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, she discussed her thoughts on the role of food, on how to create a living democracy, and how everyday people can reverse democracy’s decline.
To set the stage, Lappé remarks that our ideas about food have tremendously changed over the last decades. Now we know that vegetable proteins can supply all our protein needs and serve our health in many ways are better than meat-based diets. This was unknown when she published her first influential book. A newer awareness is that a meat-centric diet is directly connected to environmental destruction, and this is where much of the fight is now. She holds that we have allowed private corporate interests to influence our political decision-making to a degree that corporate interests can continue to feed us a meat-based diet, and more and more processed foods, at the expense of the environment, and of our health.
“Living democracy” means to her that democracy is a way of life and not just a structure of government. As she succinctly puts it: “Hunger is not created by a scarcity of food; hunger is created by a scarcity of democracy.” A living democracy is one of abundance; it is a culture in which we understand the deepest human needs – a voice, meaning and connection. A government fed by profit motive, one in which lobbyists can drive democratic decisions, cannot fulfill this need. Only a democracy in which we can participate in many different ways and feel together will deliver the changes we need.
Frances Moore Lappé and John Torpey touched upon democratic practices, gun laws, climate change, human suffering, trust, the young generation and their courage, and many other important themes. If you did not get a chance to livestream this thought-provoking, comprehensive and also heart-warming conversation, please watch the recoding here: