Saturday, September 29, 2012

Book Review: Diet For A Small Planet






published by Ballantine Books

ISBN: 978-0345373663

41 years later can the information still be relevant?

Diet For A Small Planet looks at the meat industry, specifically the grain-fed beef industry, and how it negatively affects the planet from a climate change, economic, health, and worldwide hunger. After going through all of the various reasons grain-fed beef is bad for the planet (not to mention quite a few industry related horror stories), Lappé gives us possible solutions and tons of recipes that are protein rich and meatless.

Although this book was important at the beginning of the environmental movement when it first came out in 1971, is it still relevant? Yes and no. It is good to know where you came from so you can plot out where you are going. And it is good to know the history of the movement that join. But even though I read the 1991 version most of the information is either out of date or now fairly common knowledge. The whole complimentary protein thing has been disproven, though she does touch on this in the new book and acknowledges that it isn’t that important anymore. There have been substantial changes to the meat industry, but I think there are still plenty of bad things going on. I haven’t tried any of the recipes but I follow the basic guidelines of meat free eating.

All in all, it is a good read more from a historical reason than a current one. There are some good ideas about eating in it as well. Check it out from the library or pick up a used copy:

2.5 out of 5

No comments:

Post a Comment