I grew up in Cow Town. Or make that Fort Worth, Texas. It was the ’50s and supper was canned spinach with either meat loaf or with what my brother and I called “loose meat”—ground beef and canned mushroom soup. Iceberg lettuce and Jell-O rounded it out.
Food was not a big deal.
But when I ended up in Berkeley in the ’60s, food was a big deal. The food scene buzzed with experimentation. We rejected white-bread culture, and eating brown rice became a political statement. With stirfried veggies, what could be better? At the same time, food became my teacher: I spent long hours in the university agriculture library trying to figure out why there was so much hunger in the world. Were we really running out of food? Well, no, there was more than enough for all. I was more startled to discover that we humans are actually creating scarcity.
The global marketplace is driven by underlying economic rules that concentrate wealth and generate extreme inequality. Millions of people are too poor to pay market price for food. So grain that could feed the hungry instead becomes a raw material for a luxury product: grain-fed meat.
How illogical, how destructive! I don’t have to be part of that, I realized. It dawned on me that eating low on the food chain—a plant-centered diet—was best for others, my body, and the Earth. The ultimate win-win.
I never felt I was “giving up” anything. It soon dawned on this daughter of Cow Town that, while animal foods come in a few shapes and flavors, the world of plant food is almost endless: Think of green, red, yellow veggies. Root foods—from yams to purple potatoes. Legumes, including peas, beans, lentils, each with jillions of varieties. Fruits, from the bright, giant watermelon to the dark, delicate fig.
I learned that nuts and seeds are not just for the birds. I started trying out different taste combinations. What … you mean mushrooms and barley make a great casserole? I scandalized my Lebanese girlfriend by adding garbanzos to my tabbouleh. I had a great old time making up stuff.
I felt not deprived but liberated. In Berkeley, we were sprouting a movement that was not about sacrifice but about rediscovering the deliciousness of the Earth. Since I first published Diet for a Small Planet in 1971, I’ve watched that movement blossom around the world—it has grown far beyond what I could ever have imagined. In the United States, there are more than four times as many farmers markets as there were nearly two decades ago. There are thriving organizations all over the country that save seeds, grow a vividly colorful palette of thousands of kinds of food plants, and develop wild and organic farms where crops coexist alongside habitat for butterflies and birds. Biodiversity, as it turns out, can make a farm more productive. And well-tended organic soil can store carbon—so good food is also a solution to climate change.
In the past four decades, food has taught me what is possible. I have realized that delicious eating is not an indulgence. It is the body’s way of reminding us how we can solve the ecological crises we face. All of us long for good food, and I believe that it’s possible for a groundswell of food lovers to heal the Earth—as millions of us align our taste buds with what the planet and people need.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
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We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
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With love, rage, and solidarity,
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