Food for thought...

Every now and then I need to remind myself that my hunger, isn’t really hunger. In fact I’m starting to think that eating food in the western world is more a form of addiction.

It still amazes me the contrast between the developing and non-developing world when it comes to food. Here we are spoilt for choice, yet we waste and consume a huge amount annually; surely something’s not right? The UK throws away an estimated 6.7 million tonnes of food away annually and Australians are throwing out three million tonnes of food every year. Most of the food could have been eaten. Not only does throwing away food waste resource, contributes to greenhouse gas emissions but the food waste equates to annual cost of £10.2 billion in UK / $6 billion in Australia. Imagine what could be done with that money?

So we accept there’s a problem here. I mean, even if we’re talking exclusively about developed countries – this is not right. Further to this, look at the problems we face with obesity and diabetes. The World Health Organization predicts there will be 2.3 billion overweight adults in the world by 2015 and more than 700 million of them will be obese. So not only do we have a problem with wasting food, we are also overindulging, eating the wrong foods and I’m sure this is something preventable with an educated mindset.

Now forgive me for pointing out the obvious. But how is it we are all being so spoilt for choice, that we waste over 10% of food we PAY for; burdening precious resources, increasing demand, bad health and furthermore wasting money, yet there are people in the world who are literally starving? Where clean water is a commodity and where people don’t know where their next meal will come from. There are a billion people who live with chronic hunger everyday. This is well beyond a mere lunch craving after skipping breakfast. Furthermore, a new rapid response assessment report released by UNEP warns that up to 25% of the world’s food production may become lost due to environmental breakdown by 2050 unless action is taken and it won’t be you or me who suffers the brunt of this. "Land degradation, urban expansion and conversion of crops and cropland for non-food production, such as biofuels, may reduce the required cropland by 8–20% by 2050, if not compensated for in other ways" and we haven't even talked about the impact of climate change yet (watch this space)!

Arguably the G8 needs to recognise the impact rising prices and a growing population has on hunger. For example higher oil prices bring more crops like corn into biofuel production, putting fuel in cars rather than food in tummy's. These are governments making these decisions and seemingly treating their people as collateral damage. Lets see what the G8 concludes tomorrow at the summit, when the G8 will talk about food security, the premise that every person in the world should have access to affordable food (there is enough food in the world for everyone to be fed), there should be support for farmers and trade could be built from the ground up.

I still feel that there is a massive gap in terms of grassroots education though. There are things we, mere people, can do to help. I’m sure if we were aware of the facts, understood what it meant to go hungry and were taught meaningful nutrition facts about food – there would be a different attitude towards it. Revoking this silo attitude of “us” and “them” so we can perhaps make a tiny life adjustment that reflects a huge one for somebody else in the world. I remember when I was a child my mother would say "You're not going to eat that? Think about the children starving in Ethiopia" - now seriously, why don't we?

I suppose the next question is – what are we going to do about it?

For more stats see Leila's post: Open Your Eyes