Cool Cuisine: The Global Warming Diet

D-I-E-T is a four-letter word. No one likes diets. Diet foods are boring, flavorless, and unsatisfying. Our next speakers have a diet we all need to stick to for the sake of the planet: The Global Warming Diet.

While more efficient automobiles and renewable energy sit center stage in the solutions category, agriculture and our industrial food system play a more minor role in the public eye. Talk about a greasy spoon-we emit similar amounts of carbon dioxide eating as we do by driving. U.S. government research shows that our chemical fertilizer and herbicide-based food system contributes close to 20 percent of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions.

We'll focus on food, where it comes from, how to cook with it, and how changing ones diet can reduce carbon emissions as effectively as buying a new fuel-efficient car. Professor Cordero will present research on the energy efficiency of our food system and the relationship to our changing climate. Chef Stec will then provide some practical advice on changing our eating & shopping habits to match Cordero's data (all while maintaining great tasting food!).

The material comes from the newly published book, Cool Cuisine: Taking the Bite out of Global Warming, which examines connections between food and energy use and offers solutions for reducing our carbon footprint through consumer education and food choices, and proposes that global warming could be the best thing to happen to the culinary world in a long time.

"What happens on your plates represents your most important engagement with the natural world and the biggest impact you have on climate change" - Michael Pollan