The Secret Ingredient

Hope: Frances Moore Lappé

“[Hope] is a key source of energy to enable us to seek solutions together.” -Frances Moore Lappé

Hope is different from faith in that we need to act in hope as opposed to just having faith that everything will be okay. But in acting, when it comes to food, we are doing so and operating in a system where we know too much about food and the pesticides in our food system, the inequity, and injustice. So how can we have hope and what is hope?

For the ancient Greeks, “Hope” was a type of self-deception; one of the evils of Pandora’s box. To the Christians, it was one of the 3 virtues. Kant asked, ‘what may I hope?’ whilst Nietzsche thought of “Hope” as the worst of all evils prolonging the torment of man. Yet even for those critical of hope like Camus, who said “hope is tantamount to resignation and to live is to not be resigned,” there was agreement that life was impossible without it.

In the reissue of Diet For A Small Planet, 50 years on our guest today Frances Moore Lappé turns to “Hope” as an antidote to many of the ills and devastating problems we face.

In this edition of The Secret Ingredient, Raj Patel of the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs, Tom Phillpot of Mother Jones Magazine, and Rebecca McInroy of KUT Radio will ask her, why?

In 1971, “Diet for a Small Planet” broke new ground, revealing how our everyday acts are a form of power to create health for ourselves and our planet. This extraordinary book first exposed the needless waste built into a meat-centered diet. Now, in a special edition for its 50th anniversary, world-renowned food expert Frances Moore Lappé goes even deeper, showing us how plant-centered eating can help restore our damaged ecology, address the climate crisis, and move us toward real democracy. Sharing her personal journey and how this revolutionary book shaped her own life, Lappé offers a fascinating philosophy on changing yourself—and the world—that can start with changing the way we eat.

Frances Moore Lappé is the author or co-author of twenty books about world hunger, living democracy, and the environment, that all started with Diet for a Small Planet that has now sold over three million copies. The revised and updated version is out now from Penguin Random House and features eighty-five updated plant-centered recipes, including more than a dozen new delights from celebrity chefs including Mark Bittman, Padma Lakshmi, Alice Waters, José Andrés, Bryant Terry, Mollie Katzen, and Sean Sherman.

Economic Man

The Secret Ingredient is “Economic Man.” Swedish economist Katrine Marçal, author of “Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?” guides the conversation on the role of gender in economics and food politics along with Raj Patel, Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy.

Eliminating Tipping in Austin?

Hosts Rebecca McInroy and Tom Philpott of The Secret Ingredient Podcast talk with restaurateurs Adam Orman from L’Oca d’Oro, Jodi Mozeika from Black Star, and Jam from Thai Fresh about why they’ve eliminated tipping at their restaurants, how they make it work for their businesses, and why it’s an important move in terms of social justice.

V&B – Hoover Alexander [Part One]

Explore the past, present and future of food in Austin with local legend Hoover Alexander alongside the hosts of The Secret Ingredient (Raj Patel, Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy). Hoover’s long career in cooking tracks incredible changes that have taken place in Austin— from The Night Hawk, to Good Eats, to Hoover’s—and his perspective can shed light on what gentrification means for the culinary life of our city.

Part Two.

TSI Live: Feeding Austin’s Hungry

In this special edition of Views & Brews, KUT’s Rebecca McInroy joins the hosts of The Secret Ingredient, Raj Patel and Tom Philpott, as they talk with guests Edwin Marty, the Food Policy Manager for the City of Austin, and Erin Lentz, from the LBJ School of Public Affairs, to ask: Why are people starving in one of the foodie capitals of the world? And what can be done about it? It’s a look at Feeding Austin’s Hungry.

V&B – Feeding Austin’s Hungry

Pancakes: Toni-Tipton Martin (Ep. 2)

In this episode of Views and Brews we’ll tour over 100 years of southern cooking with Toni-Tipton Martin author of The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks! Join KUT’s Rebecca McInroy, along with food writers and hosts of KUT’s newest podcast The Secret Ingredient, Tom Philpott and Raj Patel, as we explore the rich social, political, and economic history of the south, through food.