Hunger now scars the lives of over 1 billion people -- a new record. Today, Monday the 16th, world leaders will gather at a UN food summit in Rome to debate what to do about it. As a former Goodwill Ambassador for the World Food Program, I sense how the meeting may go. There will be more media attention on the politicians than on the issues, an abundance of speeches, and a series of oddly fancy luncheons -- with more speeches. At a similar luncheon, I remember wondering: What if I could magically transfer the 1000 calories in this vanilla souffle in front of me to a malnourished child begging in the slums of Nairobi? Sharing the extra calories eaten in the United States or Europe alone would end hunger in Africa.
These gratifying fantasies highlight some terrible inequities in how the world handles its food supply. In 2006, the World Food Program produced, but never publicly released, a map charting food consumption. Dubbed the "Fat Map," it shows where the world's calories go. Nations grow or shrink based on how much the average person eats. Depending on your perspective, it maps starvation or overeating.
The mis-distribution of food goes deeper than even the "Fat Map" implies. In India, for example, more than 300 million overweight people coexist with another 300 million who starve. Chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease that often stem from overeating are growing at a far faster rate in developing countries than in the more prosperous West. In my own region, the Middle East, obesity is skyrocketing, especially among young people.
In 2007-2008, a global food crisis surprised us as prices soared. But would the crisis have been as severe if we were not so accustomed to wasting the food we have?
Globally we are moving to an "energy morality" with young people lobbying against wasting energy -- yet there is no "food morality" even though food is organic energy. We sit by and watch each other overeat and discard food without a thought. Extravagant overindulgence is viewed as hospitality and many assume that being a good parent requires that we force feed those we love.
Eating is even a competitive sport. Earlier this year in Taiwan, a binge-eating contest claimed the life of a 23 year-old student. Each Fourth of July in New York, a young man named Joey Chestnut takes on his Japanese archrival Takeru Kobayashi at a hot dog eating contest -- last year Joey wolfed down 68 hotdogs in 10 minutes -- more than a week's supply of calories for a hungry African. At one point, Kobayashi even had a hot dog eating contest with a large brown bear -- a bizarre hit on YouTube:
We pay dearly for this overconsumption. Recent calculations set obesity-related health spending just in the United States at $150-$200 billion -- more than all foreign aid worldwide. The cost of extra medical care for the obese runs as high as $1400 per person annually. Over 2 billion people do not earn that much in a year.
Food losses are another reflection of our embrace of excess. Each year, food waste costs the average Briton over 400 UK pounds per year, while US households lose or discard 14 percent of their food. America's supermarkets and restaurants discard another 27 million tons. Adding farm and wholesale losses brings the annual bill to over $100 billion just in the US. Similar figures would, no doubt, emerge from analyzing losses in the European Union and I suspect the Gulf States as well.
While initiatives emerge to tax unhealthy food, improve nutrition education and label foods to show the carbon footprint required to produce them, there is no broad public embrace of the need to eat less and eat responsibly. Retailers and restaurants still sell food in portion sizes and packages encouraging excess eating and waste.
It is time to recognize the energy, health, and productivity losses we incur from consuming and wasting so much food. Public health campaigns worldwide -- including in the Gulf States -- now promote the message that excess weight and lack of physical activity is linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, strokes, and some types of cancer. Is anyone listening? Well, after years of increases, the Center for Disease Control in the US found that levels of obesity have finally begun to level off.
Would cutting overeating and waste really change the contours of the "Fat Map"? Not by itself. The UN estimates we need $30 billion more invested in agriculture yearly. But each of us can consume more wisely and donate food we now waste to a food bank or charity. If it makes sense to save energy, why throw away billions of dollars worth of food and overeat until it endangers our health and our future?
They did the same thing with HIV burden (where Africa becomes the fatter continent), population (where Asia looks obsese) and energy consumption. It's an interesting visual.
Restrict TV, computer/video games and other similar addictive rubbish, ban fast food, canned food, sweet cold drinks like coca-cola... make good food in moderate amounts, complete food with tea (hot tea, not cold one, - should be obvious). Walk more (not like zombies, not with wires in ears). Select area with better school to live - cut on something else, not on education...
If kids at early age are not pressed by addictive entertainment and by addictive bad food, by teen years they have chance to be able resisting aggressive half-criminal companies. With natural curiosity not suppressed at early age, they may have chance to live a life - rather than be zombies with only entertainment and food in mind.
Of course this is about the 'fat' portion of the map (I live in US, California).
Have you any other thoughts? Banning bad drinks and food from schools would be an obvious measure long long ago. Additional TAX on fast food would help too. Strengthening public TV, public radio and public schools... - that's probably too much to ask.
(1) Obesity in countries like US
(2) Hunger in countries like Ethiopia.
May be you did not paid attention to the map and did not notice the first problem. Or may be you did not read my comment and did not noticed that I wrote only about the first problem.
My point is that a pig farmer came by and took away ALL that food waste for slopping hogs, while none of the paper products or food went into sewage. I am certain that farmer raised perfectly healthy huge pigs that were slaughtered and eaten locally. Or trucked to small regional plants where delicious sausage was made (Reelfoot and Tennessee Pride in my region).
That farm is gone now and so are the packing plants and the jobs. They couldn't compete with factory farms, grain feeding hogs and mass producing pork. Burning down the planet with pesticides and doctoring the meat with who knows how much steroids and antibiotics.
Jimmy Dean was an astute business man and started at the same level. He made a tidy sum by investing in hog farming. He made great sausage too. But that company is part of the giant Sara Lee now. I have no problem with Jimmy or with Sara Lee. It's capitalism. But we lost something along the way.
Thanks for pointing out that although there are some overweight people, there is also a juxtaposed group of starving people to consider. This affects the United States like it does India, but the Dept. of Agriculture conveniently calls starvation "Food Insecurity".
Just because some people are fat doesn't mean the hungry are getting their share.
I remember my friend from Ghana was amazed when she first saw a public library and could check out books for free. (Ghana isn't even all that poor of a country). If one is lucky enough to be literate and lucky enough to have a library, then you can get William Kamkwamba. Kids from the third world study harder than any Western child. If you're in a refugee camp good luck finding a book.
People in third world countries are not looking for excuses or blaming. But if someone murders you, then the game is over. Do you feel like the Jews who died in the Holocaust should blame themselves for Nazis for killing them? That they should have figured things out quicker and gotten out of Germany before things got too
I have posted already that few in the third world can afford to buy food produced in the first world. So, I am not sure what we grow and consume in the USA is an issue, unless we are willing to simply give it away.
You have your hierarchy right and we should eat more chicken. Just south of me in Mississippi, they are learning aquaculture (grain fed fish in above ground tanks) to replace over-farming in cotton. It's big money.
Finally, I don't think you should compare corn to soybeans in your acreage model, but rather compare animal feed corn to vegetables grown and eaten locally by humans, while the beef grazes somewhere else. The food in that model is a lot more nutrition dense than processed corn or soybeans.
None of that helps the third world. I think our problem there is exclusively one of trade policy. Next door in Arkansas, I have farmers dying to ship rice and chicken down the Mississippi to Cuba and South America but they can't.