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Cooking with Julia Roberts

This article is more than 10 years old.

Julia Roberts, the Oscar-winning actress who starred in last year's film, Eat, Pray, Love, wants you to think about food.

Not the eating part -- but cooking. And not fancy cooking, either. Roberts has just become a Global Ambassador for the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.

Her job: to let the relatively affluent half of the world's population know about the hidden danger facing the more impoverished half: deadly smoke from fuels like wood, coal or animal waste.

Hard to imagine that this is a big problem? Here are some numbers Roberts wants you to know:

  • 2 million. That's how many deaths are caused each year from inhaling smoke from these fuels.
  • 16 seconds. That's how often someone dies from cooking smoke.
  • 3 billion. That's the number of people who have no choice but to use these dangerous fuels because they don't have access to clean cookstoves.

“Nearly 2 million people around the world – mostly women and children – die each year from an activity that many of us take for granted: cooking for our families,” Roberts said in a statement released today. “I am proud to stand with Secretary Clinton to work to reduce the senseless and preventable deaths from unsafe cooking conditions in developing countries and I look forward to contributing to the important work of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.”

Roberts learned about the problem -- and the solutions -- while interviewing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a Mother's Day special that will be broadcast on the Oprah Winfrey Network tomorrow, Saturday, May 7th, from 8-9:30 (EDT/PDT). It's called "Extraordinary Moms," and Roberts presents the show and was executive producer on it.

The Alliance was launched last year at the Clinton Global Initiative forum. Its goal is to help 100 million homes adopt clean and efficient stoves and fuels by 2020 -- and then push on until these safer methods become universal.

Part of the effort is developing low cost, safe cooking technologies that can be easily adopted. These range from simple, but efficient, propane or liquid petroleum gas (LPG), to solar cookers.