Free Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé; Anna Lappé Page A

two children. It was really a new book. I stressed that I did not believe that a change in the American diet would solve the world food problem. I wrote:
    A change in diet is not an answer . A change in diet is a way of experiencing more of the real world, instead of living in the illusory world created by our current economic system, where our food resources are actively reduced and where food is treated as just another commodity.… A change in diet is a way of saying simply: I have a choice. That is the first step. For how can we take responsibility for the future unless we can make choices now that take us, personally, off the destructive path that has been set for us by our forebears?
    I had never worked so hard in my life. It was exhilarating. But when the new book was out (in April 1975) and all the publicity tours were over, I collapsed—from exhaustion, I thought. Soon, however, I learned that fatigue was not my real problem. The real problem was that I did not know where to go next. Here I was, in a suburb of New York, with two small children. I also had a wonderful husband, but his life’s work—medical ethics—and his friends who revolved around that work were not mine. I had no political allies and few friends. My isolation overwhelmed me. I sank deeper and deeper into depression. I saw no escape. Only months earlier my confidence had been at its peak, my calling clear. Now I felt more lost than ever. I knew I had power and energy, but I had no idea how to apply it.
    Food First: The Challenge
    But a seed had been planted even before the new book was out. On Food Day, in March 1975, I lectured at a conference at the University of Michigan. Among the other speakers was Joseph Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. He heard part of my lecture (later he told me that the blah vegetarian meals served during the three-day conference left him so hungry he dashed out midway through my speech for some Kentucky Fried Chicken!) and we were introduced afterward. I learned that Joe was beginning work on a book about the political and economic causes of hunger. He, too, had been at the World Food Conference in Rome the autumn before. He had represented the Transnational Institute and had helped write a report for release there which indicted the conference for failing to address the roots of hunger in the political and economic system. Joe was preparing to take off from that document to write a full-length, more popular book.
    I thought no more about it until I received Joe’s outline in the mail after I got home. He asked if he might visit me to get my perspective on his project. He came, and slowly it dawned on me that Joe wanted me to write the book with him. But how could I? He lived in Washington; I lived in New York. My children were still so tiny. My daughter, Anna, was barely walking. I said no. While my husband encouraged me, I pulled back.
    However, I must not have let go of the idea altogether. I remember saying to my husband, “That man is going to write a book I wanted to write. What am I going to do?” But I felt I wasn’t ready for a commitment so enormous.
    In April I was invited to speak at a church-sponsored retreat in the Midwest. Gathered there were church leaders, the church experts on world hunger. Again I was shocked. I tried to shift the emphasis from a charity approach to one that focused on the political and economic links between Americans and the causes of world hunger. One church leader responded that he wasn’t sure that we should criticize our government’s policies, because the government can exert its power over the churches and the churches should not take chances. The general level of discussion was so uninformed that again I found myself thinking: as unprepared as I feel to take on this new book project, if not me, who? I knew that people’s unwillingness to take chances was a major factor in allowing needless hunger to continue. Was I also unwilling? If I