The Mountain-Ear
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| Delectable Planet - helping people change the world |
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| Written by administrator | |
| Wednesday, 02 December 2009 | |
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Danielle Skye Peak to Peak We all want to make a difference in the world. And the tool of choice to make this difference….our forks. Local residents Lester Karplus and Karna Knapp are helping people change the world – without politicians, without legislation, and without cost. In the 1970s, author Frances Moore Lappé told the story behind the imbalance of food resources in her book Diet for a Small Planet. When Nederland resident Lester Karplus read this book nearly four decades ago, it changed the course of his life. He recognized that the US produced enough food to feed the entire planet, but instead consumed it inefficiently in the form of meat. World Watch editors concluded in the July/August 2004 edition that "the human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future – deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities and the spread of disease." Karplus has observed that other countries have begun to emulate our western diet of animal-based and processed foods and have incurred increases in diseases formerly unknown to them. Countries that can no longer grow enough of the food that used to sustain them import animal protein and create a greater division between those who consume in excess and those who starve. World hunger could be readily solved, Karplus believes, with a global conversion to a plant-based diet. Many of the people he has met through world travels are interested in eating lower on the food chain, recognizing benefits to their own health and the health of the planet. But most didn’t know how to prepare healthy, tasty nutritious meals without animal products. Frequently asked how to get enough protein, he responds that protein is in every food and people need less than one quarter of the protein most Americans eat each day. Having raised his children (and now his grandchildren) vegetarian, Karplus has studied health and nutrition for decades. To help those who aspire to a healthier lifestyle and more sustainable planet, he and his partner Karna Knapp created DelectablePlanet.com, an easy-to-use website with a wealth of resources. It offers dozens of easy recipes and demonstrates how to prepare them in three-minute videos. Local residents Annie Thayer of Nederland and Lynn Halpren of Rollinsville joined the project and shared their favorite recipes as well. DelectablePlanet.com combines the short video demonstrations with printer-friendly recipes. “The small sound bites make the information easy to swallow (and yes, the pun is intended),” says Karplus. The meals are tasty and packed with nutrition, yet most are simple to prepare. Popular dishes include pizza, lasagna, stuffed squash, vegetable-barley soup, homemade tofu, and whole grain bread. The super-easy tofu silk pie is sinfully delicious. The website also simplifies shopping for recipe ingredients. Gleaning thousands of non-animal, non-GMO and organic products from suppliers on the internet, the site has organized them into simple categories. A quick search for those hard-to-find calypso beans, hemp seed nut butters, or black rice provides multiple choices. Just about every other pantry item that makes our culinary lives a little more interesting is available there, too. In the future, the site will include links to grocery co-ops, organic farmers, and other fresh food resources. In addition to the easy access to video recipes and the foods needed to make them, the site is packed with information, like the bean and grain cooking charts. With links to nutritional contents of foods, like-minded organizations, books, kitchen suppliers, recipe websites, and restaurant listing websites, it makes a one-stop shop for information and resources for a plant-based diet. Karplus and Knapp believe that the first step to healing our bodies and our planet begins with what we choose to put in our mouths every day and where that nourishment comes from. We can use fewer resources, lower our carbon footprint, and support food for more people. Sustainability for ourselves and for our environment begins with a plant-based diet. |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 09 December 2009 ) |
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