The Plowboy Interview: Frances Moore Lappe

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I'd like to get people to open their eyes and see the priceeconomic and otherwise—that we all pay for the food system we're tolerating. Consider just one recently created food, a pie filling that's made by liquefying whole fruit, injecting sugar into it, and then re-forming it into perfectly shaped little berries or what have you! People here and abroad are starving, yet 60,000 such "new" food items—products that actually lose nutritional value as they're being processed—have been introduced in the U.S. in just the last decade.

PLOWBOY: How can an individual cope with the health threat posed by such things?

LAPPE: It's simple . . . just eat fewer processed products and animal foods. Reduce your consumption of eggs, full-fat dairy products, and meats . . . enjoy a variety of whole vegetables and grains . . . cook with unsaturated oils like sunflower and corn . . . and you'll be covered on just about every health front. It's really not difficult to develop a nutritious—and delicious—diet: People have been eating that way for thousands of years. This goal is a lot easier to achieve, of course, for folks who quit shopping in supermarkets and start using cooperative food stores and farmers' markets.

PLOWBOY: I'm sure some people would be surprised that you recommend limiting the consumption of meat, but not eliminating it from our diet.

LAPPE: I rarely eat meat myself, because I find that I feel better when I don't, but I'm not a vegetarian. If you want to eat meat, I recommend that you use it as the Chinese do, as a flavoring in a meal that's basically made up of vegetables.

I understand, of course, that grain-fed meat is not the cause of the world hunger problem-and eating some of it doesn't directly take food out of the mouths of starving people-but it is, to me, a symbol and a symptom of the basic irrationality of a food system that's divorced from human needs. Therefore, using less meat can be an important way to take responsibility. Making conscious choices about what we eat, based on what the earth can sustain and what our bodies need, can help remind us that our whole society must begin to balance sustainable production with human need.

One thing is certain: It would be impossible for everyone in the world to emulate the American meat-centered diet . . . that would require twice as much global cropland as is currently being cultivated! Grain-fed livestock is such an enormous drain of resources that, in many ways, eating a prime steak is like driving a Cadillac. Consider this . . . every calorie of protein we get from feedlot beef costs us 78 calories of fossil fuel. Producing a one-pound steak uses up 2,500 gallons of water. Imagine . . . producing just ten pounds of steak demands the equivalent of my household's annual water consumption!

Furthermore, most of our nation's soil erosion—about 5.9 billion tons—is associated with crops destined for animal feed and with the overgrazing of our rangeland. And meat animals are protein factories in reverse: It takes eight pounds of grain protein to make one pound of beef. Overall, our livestock population today consumes ten times the grain we Americans eat directly . . . outweighs the human population of our country by four to one . . . and uses two-thirds of our total agricultural output.

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