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Tom Philpott

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.

 

Each Others: Rita Valencia and Charlotte Sáenz

“How do we build these understandings from a decolonial, antiracist and antipatriarchal basis? How do we build real solidarity bridges that do not replicate patronising structures of power? How can we learn and build with those who have resisted and re(x)isted, in order to open new imaginaries to heal mother earth, the other, and ourselves?” Rita Valencia and Charlotte Sáenz

These are just some of the questions we explore with Rita Valencia and Charlotte Sáenz on this edition of The Secret Ingredient with Raj Patel, Tom Philpott, and Rebecca McInroy.

Rita Valencia has been working for several years with the Proceso de Liberación de la Madre Tierra movement in the Cauca region of the Nasa people in Colombia, and she along with Charlotte Sáenz talk with us about joy, the difference between translation and interpretation, reimagining liberation, time and social movements, and the paradigm shift that must take place today.

In our correspondence prior to this recording, Charlotte and Rita wrote: “It feels important for us to hear and learn from such pueblos en movimiento, that are doing things beyond the nation-state and reframing ways of doing, not only politics but also social and even ontological existence. This is particularly important because complex concepts such as Mandar Obedeciendo or Buen Vivir are being imported into English and other dominant languages and mindscapes as mere translations (bad ones for that matter), and not as grounded practices. This becomes even more urgent and necessary because extractivism, repression, and all climate change drivers are increasing and will continue to do so during the current global pandemic and economic recession.”

Read more about Rita and the Food March, the movement organized to feed the most dispossessed in the cities, in a piece published in La Jornada newspaper’s Ojarasca.

 

 

Mushrooms (Ep. 33)

“We just assume our everyday normal consciousness is the one and the most accurate…there are unseen worlds, there are unseen forces, and you can look them in a religious sense, but you don’t have to.” –Michael Pollan

On the latest Secret Ingredient Podcast Raj Patel and Tom Philpott talk with Michael Pollan about his new book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.

 

Decolonization (Ep. 32)

“We can’t even talk about decolonizing our medicine until we talk about decolonizing our food.”  –Rupa Marya

On this edition of The Secret Ingredient hosts Raj Patel, Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy talk with Dr. Rupa Marya. Marya teaches and practices medicine in San Francisco, she is also the lead singer with Rupa and The April Fishes.

Marya’s work with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in South Dakota during the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests gave her insights into the impact of colonialism on the health of Native Americans and disenfranchised peoples all over the country. At the center of a clinic, she established on the Standing Rock reservation, is the kitchen.

 

 

Cheap Food (Ep. 30)

“[Reparation Ecology] is an invitation to observe these big transformations as reparation. Moving away from capitalism moving toward something much better…it is a deeper way of engaging with the  politics of possibility after capitalism.” -Raj Patel

On this edition of The Secret Ingredient hosts Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy turn the tables on Raj Patel to interview him along with Jason W. Moore about their new book, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and The Future of The Planet.

Tomatoes: Coalition of Immokalee Workers (Ep. 29)

“The work we do is too important to the nation. We are the people who make it possible for every meal to exist. We feed the nation and we ask, have always asked, for the possibility to feed our own families in a dignified way without having to be in a vulnerable position all the time…Right now our community is in need and that is going to be the case for a while…but then the most important thing is not how to go back to normal necessarily, because normal for us it’s poor, it’s vulnerable, it’s all the things that make it really scary when hurricanes hit our area.” –Gerardo Reyes Chavez, Coalition of Immokalee Workers

When hurricane Irma hit the Florida coast in September of 2017, one place under siege was Immokalee, FL; the center of the region’s agriculture industry and home to many immigrant and migrant families, where almost 90% of the nation’s tomatoes are harvested during the winter months.

In this edition of The Secret Ingredient, Raj Patel and Tom Philpott talk with Gerardo Reyes Chavez and Julia Perkins from The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, about not only about what is needed now in the aftermath of this devastating hurricane, but also about why this population is so vulnerable, underserved, and exploited, and what they have done to transform the food industry through the Fair Food Program.

 

 

 

 

Land Reform: Suzan Erem (Ep. 28)

“We have to do something to take us off this treadmill of ratcheting up land prices.” -Suzan Erem, The Sustainable Iowa Land Trust

On the latest edition of The Secret Ingredient Raj Patel, Tom Philpott, and Rebecca McInroy talk with Suzan Erem about the future of US farming.

Erum is the president and co-founder of the Sustainable Iowa Land Trust (SILT), and author of Labor Pains: Inside America’s New Union Movement.

We spoke to her from the studios of Iowa Public Radio in Iowa City, Iowa.

Strawberries: Julie Guthman (Ep 27.)

“Strawberries is kind of the quintessence of industrial agriculture in California. It’s the fifth highest value crop in the state. It also got the most heavy pesticide regime, by far, of any other crop in the state. And it kind of captures so much of the dynamics of what’s going on in California.“-Julie Guthman

In this edition of The Secret Ingredient Raj Patel, Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy talk with Dr. Julie Guthman about strawberry production, what’s happening with chemicals and fumigants in the strawberry fields today, and where she sees hope in the food movement.

Seed Saving: Janet Maro (Ep. 26)

“Life begins with the seed germinating…we depend on seed and most of the seed is the seed we will produce, have it, save and use in the next planting season. That’s what most of the farmers in Tanzania still do… It was inherited for generations and generations.” –Janet Maro

The seed exchange system that Maro speaks about is currently under threat in Tanzania. Assistance organizations in that country that are seeking to help small farms also supported regulations that banned seed-sharing – a generations-old practice among small-scale farmers. Tanzania passed legislation that made it illegal to share seeds as a condition for receiving development assistance through the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NAFSN). You can read more about the legislation in this article.

In this episode of The Secret Ingredient, we wanted to find out more about this new law, so Raj Patel, Tom Philpott, and Rebecca McInroy called up Janet Maro, head of Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT).

Since this show was recorded in December of last year, Maro said that SAT had a seed stakeholders platform, in which farmers met with Tanzanian officials to discuss the ramifications of the law. Although the small-scale farmers gained more clarity about the overall effects of seed-sharing, she says, they still want exemption from penalties as a result of seed-sharing.

Nutritionism: Aya Kimura (Ep. 25)

James Baldwin said, “the purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.” When considering this sentiment in relationship to “nutritionism” one might look at Aya Kimura‘s book, Hidden Hunger: Gender and the Politics of Smarter Foods, as a work of “art” as she explores the questions that remain after the “experts” answer problems of micronutrient deficiencies with the science of fortification and biofortification.

In the latest edition of The Secret Ingredient, Raj Patel, Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy talk with Kimura about food and culture, market forces, and what is lost when the “western savior comes in to rescue the global south.”

Nutrition: Joan Gussow (Ep. 24)

“Once in a while, I thin I’ve had an original thought, then I look and read around and realize Joan said it first.” -Michael Pollan

We take for granted now that part of being healthy is eating a variety of whole foods, but not so long ago talking about food was taboo in the field of nutrition.

In this episode of The Secret Ingredient Raj Patel, Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy talk to Dr. Joan Gussow. Gussow is the author of many books including The Feeding Web, The Nutrition Debate and Growing, Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables. The New York Times has called her, “The matriarch of the eat-locally-think-globally food movement.“

V&B – Intersection of Policy & Scholarship

Tom Philpott of Mother Jones Magazine and KUT’s The Secret Ingredient leads the conversation with eminent economist James K. Galbraith and Michael Lind, co-founder of New America.

(Bush) Tea: Annalee Davis (Ep. 21)

“The history of slavery in the Caribbean is traumatic. It’s a difficult legacy and I don’t think that it’s been well processed. So the serving of tea becomes this way to sort of address that. To consider, how can we move forward? What does it look like to think about healing in a space like that?” -Annalee Davis
Annalee Davis is a Barbadian artist and activist, whose work addresses the complicated legacy of slavery in the Caribbean. On this edition of The Secret Ingredient Raj Patel, Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy enjoy her serving of (Bush) Tea at the KUT studios in Austin, Texas where she was preparing to open her show This Ground Beneath My Feet – A Chorus of Bush in Rab Lands at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her exhibition is on view until December 15, 2016.

Spin: Anna Lappé (Ep. 20)

“There isn’t a single aspect of what we eat that is not touched by industry spin.” -Anna Lappé

There are so many logistical barriers to healthy, fresh, ethically produced and farmed foods — from food deserts to our busy daily schedules — that managing to eat well is a challenge. But there is another layer to the story of our food and that is “Spin.”

Companies spend billions of dollars on messaging to convince consumers that their products are good for us, even when they are packed with everything from high-fructose corn syrup to saturated fat and salt.

In this edition of The Secret Ingredient Raj Patel, Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy talk with the award winning founder of the Small Planet Institute and The Small Planet Fund and author of Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It, Anna Lappé about the work she is doing to combat “Spin.”

V&B – Hoover Alexander [Part Two]

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 One.

TSI Extra – Hoover Alexander [Part Two]

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 One.

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