Author Frances Moore Lappé Kicks Off One Book One Belmont

Author Frances Moore Lappé will kick off the 2009 One Book One Belmont community-wide reading program with the talk, “Food Choices for a Small Planet.” This free talk will take place at 7PM Wednesday, Sept. 9, at the Town Hall auditorium. She will explore the ways that our food choices can be a powerful tool for affecting our bodies, the earth, and the people who tend it.

A Belmont resident, Lappé is a world food and hunger expert who has authored or co-authored 16 books, including the three-million-copy bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet. According to AP reporter JM Hirsch, this book, first published in 1971, has provided “the blueprint for eating with a small carbon footprint since long before the term was coined.”

In May 2008, Gourmet Magazine named her one of 25 people (including Thomas Jefferson, Upton Sinclair, and Julia Child), whose work has changed the way America eats. The article said:  "During the countercultural upheavals of the 1960s, she formed a forceful synthesis of beliefs about global resources, energy consumption, personal food choices, and moral responsibility. In the hugely influential Diet for a Small Planet (1971) she proposed a meatless diet relying on protein-rich food combinations as a practical means of addressing all these issues. World hunger and just food distribution have remained central concerns of her work."

Light refreshments will be provided after the talk, courtesy of Angelato and Kitchen on Common. For more information, visit the library Web site at www.belmont.lib.ma.us or call 617-993-2872.