Plant-Based Meat Has Roots in the 1970s

Americans looking to cut back on meat are following a movement forged by a groundbreaking book, ‘Diet for a Small Planet.’
Even as Americans mass in cities and their suburbs, the range-roaming cowboy has endured as a national symbol, along with the cholesterol-laden diet he represents: heavy on steaks, hamburgers, sausages and the like. What if that iconic image were replaced someday by, say, a technician in a lab coat producing a facsimile of a traditional burger, one made from plants and not animals?

Not very likely, you say? Perhaps not right away. But the lure of the cowboy notwithstanding, more Americans than ever are eating plant-based meat, convinced that it is less harmful to them and less taxing on the environment. Millennials in particular are giving the phrase “all sizzle, no steak” a positive spin it never had.

This slow but perhaps inexorable shift in food preferences is explored by Retro Report, whose mission is to focus on how the past influences present-day policies and customs. In this video offering, it turns to Frances Moore Lappé, whose 1971 best-selling book “Diet for a Small Planet” changed the way many people viewed global hunger in an era of rapid population growth. Ms. Lappé (pronounced Luh-PAY) concluded that there was plenty of food to go around. The problem, she said, was one of distribution. Too much of it went to nourish animals on four legs rather than directly to those on two.

“I just said, “O.K., I’m going to figure out are we really at the Earth’s limits — is that really the cause of hunger?” she told Retro Report. She took her father’s slide rule and “just sat there hour after hour literally putting two and two together.” Her bottom line: The world’s grain supply was “more than enough” to feed every human on the planet. (continues)