Her crop of predictions brings author new respect
I can't explain exactly why I feel the need to feed her, but I arrive on Frances Moore Lappé's doorstep in Belmont lugging lunch.
It's partly that I'm excited about harvesting and sharing the first asparagus and tender lettuce of the season, but maybe I'm more invested in a homage of sorts to the woman who flipped over the food world like a snowglobe in 1971 with the publication of "Diet for a Small Planet."
Back then, at the age of 26, Frances Moore Lappé crunched the numbers to discover what no one had yet said: that there were enough calories in the world to feed everyone and that "Hunger is human-made."
Nearly half the world's supply of grain fed livestock while millions starved: 16 pounds of grain produced one pound of beef, with a small proportion of the world consuming a hugely disproportionate amount of its food resources, she said. Three million copies of "Diet" later, she's more relevant than ever as the tsunami of global food crises she foresaw crashes down around us.
She answers the door at her large, comfortable house in Belmont, and I'm led upstairs to an airy, sunny kitchen with wooden wainscoting and glass jars stacked on wooden shelves. It looks more Vermont than Belmont, down to the shovel-size potato fork hanging in the dining room.
"It's just decoration," she assures me. Her life is paradoxical: she travels widely, espousing the virtues of the local and community-based. She regrets her own carbon footprint as she campaigns for ecological, sustainable land use. Recent food crises have sharpened her rueful perception that "The worse the world gets, the more in demand I am."
She'd like to stay home, but is driven to speak out about better ways to feed the world's people. She has agreed reluctantly to tape a show on global food crises with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, to be followed soon after by an appearance at a world food conference.
"When I wrote 'Diet' in 1971, it was heresy to suggest anyone could have a healthy diet without eating meat. And here I was, a young woman from Fort Worth, Texas, the heart of cow country," she says with a laugh.
More than ever, she has some things to say about food that upend the status quo: "I hate the term "conventional" that Whole Foods uses to describe nonorganic produce," she told me. "What's conventional about using chemical pesticides? The farmworkers using them have a life expectancy of 49 years."
"Improvisational" is the term Lappé likes to use to talk about a food consciousness that makes the best use of local, flavorful ingredients.
Her book "Hope's Edge" wove travel notes from food movements all over the world, including this country, where a talented array of "pioneer vegetarian and whole foods cookbook authors and chefs" have brought about "the Delicious Revolution" in American food.
I grouse a little about the challenges of eating fresh and local year-round in New England, in contrast to, say, California, where Lappé lived for many years.
"Massachusetts is in the forefront of a lot that's really progressive with food now," she replies.
More and more people shop at farmers markets and subscribe to community supported agriculture, or CSAs, in which people buy shares in local farms and get weekly produce.
"People are getting it that it is really liberating. What's exhausting is shopping in supermarkets with thousands of products. Instead, you get this nice box of fresh food and start thinking about all the possibilities. . ."
But how can we eat seasonally in a climate that's cold so much of the year? She hesitates for an instant and then with a smile announces, "You learn to love root vegetables," before launching into a paean to roasted rutabagas, and golden beets, and baked potatoes.
She also wants to counter the often-raised objection that natural, organic foods cost more: "A bowl of Froot Loops costs three times more than a bowl of organic oatmeal. You can get two pounds of organic potatoes for the cost of a package of Pringles. What's expensive is processed food. And that's excluding the enormous healthcare costs we pay as a nation for eating so badly."
We settle down to the lunch I've brought, and she is graciously delighted with the food, including the homemade, multigrain bread. She confesses to a weakness for almost any kind of bread as she slices consecutive slivers.
"When I was in my 20s, I used to diet," she confides. "I was always losing and regaining that same 10 pounds. But when I became a vegetarian, I leveled out and have stayed pretty much the same since."
As we munch and chat, the garden bounty of roasted asparagus and salad greens, with homegrown herbs in the dressing, reconcile me to local backyards, even without California warmth. And I understand better my insistence on bringing food. Breaking bread with someone is a qualitatively different experience than talking with them. It doesn't matter if the crusty, fragrant loaf is a little lopsided or there's stray chickweed in the salad.
I understand Lappe's message in a way I didn't before: What's at the heart of it is not deprivation but celebration.
I leave just before she's to be fitted for a strapless red floor-length dress, a gift from her significant other, that she will wear when she receives the James Beard Foundation's Humanitarian of the Year award at Lincoln Center today.
I can't help thinking she may be going about educating the public in the wrong way. We're a superficial culture in so many respects, after all.
When she steps out on the stage at Lincoln Center, she'll be honored for 40 years and more than a dozen books devoted to food advocacy. But what people will see is a slim, effervescent 60-something woman who looks terrific - not in a great-for-her-age way, but just terrific, period.
If she could be pressed into poster-woman service for vegetarianism in that red dress and we could divert some of the $40 billion we spend every year on contrived diet-related books and products toward fresh, organic food, we'd have a different world. 