Folklore is a way to save the world. Major sustainability problems—climate change,mass extinction, pollution, and more—are driving the global human system into crisis. The physical growth of this human system is the cause of these problems. By shunting the energies that feed this growth into spendthrift pursuits, among which folklore holds an important place, we can evade crisis in a fair way. This study brings this sustainability solution to bear on the folklore of food, for two reasons. First, because folklore is a squandering of energy that builds community. Second, because the Food System is the biggest driver of sustainability problems, the sector these problems threaten most, and the one system we cannot live without. I use the Planetary Boundaries framework to bring these dire sustainability crises on the horizon into sharper view. To justify folklore as a solution, I take up recent scholarship that applies the General Economy of Georges Bataille to sustainability, and I then re-work these ideas through Systems Thinking. I call this approach “Sacred Ecology”. Sacred Ecology seeks to avoid sustainability crises through squandering of wealth, thereby starving the system out of physical growth. Pouring our energies into food-based folklore, under the guidance of sacred ecological principles and within scientific frameworks, is a reasonable means of either dodging onrushing crises fueled by the growth of the global human system, or, if we fail at those sustainability tasks, of readying ourselves for the long, dark years of resilience it will take to ride these crises out.