What happens when food, dogma, a green chef, and a Ph.D. collide? Why a scientifically based feel good cookbook, that’s what.
How this cookbook review ended up on the website Energy Bulletin I have no idea. But the description is entertaining. I used to only worry about eating something that was too fattening, now I worry if that Snickers Bar will be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and cause us to pass a tipping point (and I’m not talking bathroom scales). So much to worry about, so little time.
Hmmm, here’s the premise:
“How do our food choices affect global warming? That’s what this website and project, named after the original title of the book, The Global Warming Diet, Cool Recipes for a Hot Planet, set out to discover.”
I wonder if Al Gore has tried this? Is there anything that is safe from being tied to global warming these days?
Cool Cuisine: Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming
Is global warming really the ‘best thing that has happened to the culinary world in a long time’ as chef Laura Stec suggests? The discovery that our food choices can reduce global warming as effectively as buying a new fuel-efficient vehicle inspires new strategies towards creating a more sustainable world. What we eat does have an impact on our planet and you can eat better tasting, higher-vibe food and find solutions for the global warming diet through Cool Cuisine: Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming by Laura Stec with Eugene Cordero, PhD (Gibbs Smith, Publisher).
Cool Cuisine is a smorgasbord of scientific fact and culinary art where the reader learns new ways to look at global warming. It presents the full cycle on how our agrochemical food system affects global warming and how global warming affects the food system. With in-depth research and interviews from over 30 scientists, farmers, ranchers and food professionals, it inspires personal life changes by offering easy recipes, ideas for your next “book and cook” club, and simple tips on how to prepare a global-cooling cuisine. The book is organized into three sections: the first gives background to global warming- food connections, the second highlights solutions, and the third is a “culinary how-to,” teaching simple techniques and tips for cooking a Cool Cuisine.
Laura Stec
Laura Stec is a San Francisco Bay Area chef and environmental advocate who enjoys teaching about the artistry, health and energetics of cooking. She trained at the Culinary Institute of America, the School of Natural Cookery and the Vega Macrobiotic Study Center before starting her own personal chef/catering business – Laura Stec – Innovative Cuisine, and joining Kaiser Permanente Medical Group as their Culinary Health Educator. Since founding one of the first U.S. food and environment organizations in 1989, Stec has been feeding us with the idea that one the most positive effects we can have on the environment begins on our dinner plate, a message she continues to promote while on staff 12 years at Acterra, an environmental organization based in Palo Alto, CA. With over 25 years experience in the food industry, Stec now partners with EcoSpeakers.com to lecture and consult with corporations and institutions on ways to bring regionally responsible cuisine into their food systems.
Read more about Laura at http://laurastec.com/aboutlaura.html
Eugene Cordero, Ph.D
Dr. Eugene Cordero is an Associate Professor in the Department of Meteorology at San José State University (SJSU) in California. His research interests are focused on understanding the processes responsible for long-term changes in climate through the use of observations and atmospheric models. At present, this work is supported by research grants from the National Science Foundation and NASA. Dr. Cordero is a coauthor on the WMO/UNEP 2006 Ozone Assessment report and is currently participating in projects related to evaluating the models used for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. In the Department of Meteorology, Dr. Cordero teaches various courses in climate change and is involved in projects working to improve methods of education that engage and ultimately stimulate social change.
Read more about Eugene at http://www.met.sjsu.edu/~cordero
(Hat tip and a carbon free lunch to David Walton)
Richard (23:20:35) : “New Scientist had this subject as their main article in a recent issue. Not that i read it just saw the headline, since they are against waste i decided not to waste my money.”
It’s incredible just how partisan New Scientist has become, of late. I noticed that headline too (it was the week when the LHC was switched on.) Looking at their website I notice that the current issue trumpets “The Folly of Growth” (“Find out how our economy is killing the Earth and what we can do about it”) and I can also see references to an article proclaiming “Climate change is driving increase in tiger attacks” and an “unsustainable living” photo competition which “focuses on what happens when people don’t live in harmony with nature”. New Scientist is certainly a pillar of AGW/environmental orthodoxy these days.
Stefan (03:23:19) : “Vaguely, the vegetarians I know all seem to be a little depressed. I’m personally curious about this because whenever I eat lean meat, my energy levels go up and my mood improves–I’m happier and more active.”
I think this is probably not coincidental; meat contains tryptophan, which boosts serotonin levels, and therefore positively affects mood (or so I’ve read, anyway.)
I recall a theory that lack of animal fat in the diet leads to reduced intelligence. Would this count as evidence?
Famous advice on diet:
http://tinyurl.com/5pg4sv
The Weather Channel global warming blog has regular postings by various experts on choosing foods to reduce carbon footprints. Its really quite pathetic.
I recently read about a bumper sticker-
“I’m not a vegetarian because I love animals- I’m a vegetarian because I hate plants.”
AGW smacks of Y2K
Is the global warming diet in favor of global warming or agin it?
From Dr. Cordero’s vita:
“In the Department of Meteorology, Dr. Cordero teaches various courses in climate change and is involved in projects working to improve methods of education that engage and ultimately stimulate social change.”
The last part is one of the clearest and most blatant revelations you could hope to see connecting the study of climate change to the real objective, viz., “social change.”
If GW can get you a research grant, why not use it to sell cookbooks? Another form of capitalism. Or side show hucksterism.
After all, PT supposedly said there’s a sucker born every minute.
Chillie willies anyone or maybe we should just live off of ice .
LOL!
Newly name “Book of the week” by the Tin Foil Hat Book Club! Required reading for those professional worriers with too much time on their hands.
If you think that this book looks interesting, then I have a piece of advice: Get a job and quit living off my paycheck.
So, I guess this means haggis is out, unless veggie haggis. So, why all the hand-wringing about haggis “threatened” (or was that “endangered”), then? I hope AGWers like the world of cognitive dissonance they live in. Fun to watch, too!
You think this is bad, you apparently haven’t watched Planet
Puke Green. Emeril says he’s been cooking “green” for 30 years. Riiight. That gaudy set with lots of lights, and lots of meat, and lots of gas (in several senses of the word).This is nothing but opportunism, or trying to make everyone into mushroom-eating hippies, so they can be more easily controlled.
If I have to substiture beans and legumes for meat as my primary source of dietary protein my digetive processes will produce more greenhouse gas than ever before. Can I buy methane credits?
Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.
– Wallace Irwin (1875-1959),
US journalist, humorist.
Only in a wealthy, well fed society where hunger is nothing more than an abstraction will one find people who ponder such nonsense.
Phillip Bratby (01:55:10) :
“I’ve never noticed my food …… being musical!”
Tempted, but must resist………must resist.
“is there anything that is safe from being tied to global warming these days?”
Science?
George Bruce (08:07:43) :
“Tempted, but must resist………must resist.”
I thought of that, but discounted after effects!
Just a point to ponder about the green machine. IN Florida a few years back they decided that one of the larger lakes was killed by the nasty evil farmers that had been growing produce on the low shores of Lake Apopka in Central Florida for nearly 100 years. The lake died in the time 1970 1990. The result was that there was a mandated price and all the farmers were forced to sell to “save the lake” The end result in the initial phase was that the real estate value of the farmland went thorough the roof and many more multimillion dollar homes were built on the land formerly used to grow food stuffs. As it turns out the lake became even more loaded with nitrates due to the unlimited use of fertilizer on the lawns with the daily run off from the liberally used irrigation to keep the grass green during the annual Florida dry spell. (Dec-May) and the normal rain the rest of the year. It seems that the home owners and developers didn’t save the catch ponds the farmers used to recycle the run off and reuse the same fertilizer until the plants had reduced it to insignificance and the lake was in worse shape than ever. The point proved with the project was that the farmers working to make a profit were protecting the lake with their reuse of run off water and the nutrients in it while the developers and homer owners were not worried so much about saving any thing just having pretty green grass.
Forever lost to us is one of the most productive food growing areas in the United States.
Makes you wonder about green huh?
Bill Derryberry
You know, as I have grown older and wiser, I have come to the conclusion that some people are just a waste of perfectly good DNA
Sorry couldn’t help myself
RE: TerryBixler (21:48:41) :
to rephrase Terry – “Make ethanol from corn. Simple recipe really.”
Corn ethanol – the environmentally friendly food…
http://www.moonshine-still.com/
http://www.moonshine-still.com/still.pdf
JP, I agree. concern for the environment is a luxury afforded afluent societies. If the tinfoil hat crowd actually succeeds our diet will soon consist of anything we can outrun and kill with a rock.
Being on a diet will be a good thing, its means you have found something to eat.
Let me guess. This has something to do with a.) not eating meat, and b.) not eating the sort of vegetables that make up for the lack of meat.
I remember a L’il Abner skit about how a vacancy occurred in the Gourmet Society: a member starved to death because there wasn’t anything left in the world good enough to eat.
In addition to naming the up-coming Solar Minimum the “Gore Minimum” or alternately the “Gore-Hansen Minimum”, I strongly suggest the adoption of the made-up term “Deopogenic Global Cooling”.
When dealing with Totalitarianism of any form, the most important part of the battlefield involves (a) language and (b) the indoctrination of the young, e.g. “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad”
(Not to say that Al Gore is actually a bipedal pig, although he apparently eats like one.)
BTW “Anthropogenic Global Warming” now gets 588K hits on Google.
A cookbook is the least of our worries; in any case, topical cookbooks are likely the most-trailing of trailing indicators.
HA Reynolds
Houston
PS Buy Coal.
With all these people eating beans maybe I could make millions on a cork and trade system.