Frances Moore Lappé (born February 10, 1944) is an American researcher and author in the field of food and democracy policy.

She has co-founded three organizations that explore the roots of hunger, poverty, and environmental crises, as well as solutions emerging worldwide through what she calls "living democracy".

In 1990, Lappé co-founded the Center for Living Democracy, a nine-year initiative to accelerate the spread of democratic innovations in which regular citizens contribute to problem-solving.

She served as founding editor of the center's American News Service (1995–2000), which placed stories of citizen problem-solving in nearly half the nation's largest newspapers.

In 2002, Lappé and her daughter Anna established the Small Planet Institute based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a collaborative network for research and popular education to bring democracy to life.

She serves as an advisor to the Calgary Centre for Global Community and on the board of David Korten's People-Centered Development Forum.

Lappé has also held various teaching and scholarly positions: Historian Howard Zinn wrote: "A small number of people in every generation are forerunners, in thought, action, spirit, who swerve past the barriers of greed and power to hold a torch high for the rest of us.

The Washington Post says: "Some of the twentieth century's most vibrant activist thinkers have been American women – Margaret Mead, Jeannette Rankin, Barbara Ward, Dorothy Day – who took it upon themselves to pump life into basic truths.

In the same year, Gourmet Magazine named Lappé among 25 people (including Thomas Jefferson, Upton Sinclair, and Julia Child), whose work has changed the way America eats.