Why World Food Day Matters
For someone who spends all her waking hours saving
food from the landfill and diverting it to feed the poor and hungry, World Food Day is deeply meaningful. Suzanne Mooney, founder of The Lost Food Project,
shares her story.
Malaysian soup kitchens such as Kechara feed the poor
and hungry regardless of race and creed. — Filepic
Suzanne Mooney
(right) with DBKL Lioence and Petty Traders Management director Zaharuddin
Basiron loading surplus food from the Kuala Lumpur Wholesale Market in Selayang
into the back of a truck bound for various charity homes. Lost food can be
diverted to feed all of the world's hungry and Malaysia is among the leaders in
South-East Asia in this effort. — Filepic
People
slurping soup during La Porciuncula, a religious event where Franciscan monks
serve food to the poor, at the Los Descalzos Convent in Lima, Peru. Poverty is
a main cause of world hunger affecting 800 million globally. — AP
By SUZANNE MOONEY
Star2/Taste/15 October 2017
FOOD is something most of us take for
granted. We wake up knowing breakfast will boost our day. A couple of hours
later, we might start clock-watching, eager for a lunch to break the monotony
of work.
The end of the day might be spent having
dinner with loved ones sharing special moments and discussing important
details of the day. Even religious holidays are intricately intertwined with
eating (or not eating). Clearly, food is a focal point of all our lives, every
day of the week.
So why do we need a day to be dedicated to
food?
The importance of
World Food Day
The UN World Food Day was set up to
commemorate the establishment of the World Food Organisation (FAO) in 1945
after World War II. Understanding the precious nature of food, and a country’s
ability to be self-sufficient (called food security) is best felt during times
of conflict.
We should not take food for granted, and
remember there are millions living in poverty and hunger. The FAO’s goals are
to fight hunger and achieve food security, reduce rural poverty and promote the
sustainable use of natural resources.
I believe we all need to be reminded of
the real essence and purpose of food. I don’t just mean the gastronomy of how
to improve your beef rendang or how to make a low-fat char kway teow so you can
fit into your skinny jeans.
Food is not only essential to sustain life
but is also fundamental in providing the nourishment and energy necessary for
learning and growth.
Without a nourished body, you lack a
nourished brain and you simply can’t learn or thrive. This results in a mammoth
risk to a country’s development.
Over generations, we have developed from
the hunter-gatherers of . our forefathers, and slowly moved to cities to work.
In this transition so many of us have lost touch with nature.
How food grows, how it is farmed, is lost
to many of us - we don’t even know how to cook. Maybe it doesn’t matter because
street food, coffee shops and convenience stores selling quick and cheap meals
are everywhere. Should we even care?
The simple answer is yes.
We are what we eat. Many people are
becoming overweight and even obese - which is a huge health problem just
waiting around the corner.
At the same time, almost 800 million
people (just under 10% of the population) are undernourished, some of whom are
starving to death.
Through a child's eyes
As a child I remember the terrible
droughts in Ethiopia of the 1980s. I bought the Band Aid single which so many
global artists recorded, and donated money to alleviate the hunger that entered
our living room every night in the form of BBC news reports.
I remember crying when I saw an emaciated
baby with big brown eyes looking at the camera with no hope in her eyes. She
did not even have the energy to bat away insects and flies landing on her face.
A few hours later, came the news that the child had died.
I could not understand why this was
happening. “Can’t we just send food to these people, Mum?” I would plead. She
explained that the world didn’t quite work like that - but we. could send some
money and hopefully aid agencies and governments could provide long-term help.
Children are often the most practical
problem solvers - and I did not like this solution.
I knew all the shops and supermarkets
were filled to the brim with food - so why were so many people walking around
like skeletons, days away from death?
Just because they happened to be born in a
particular country? It felt very wrong. And why were we not doing more about
this?
This was the first time I actively
remember realising what the word “inhumane” really meant.
'That's cricket'
I was not alone in my despair. Bob
Geldoff, a mediocre Irish singer from a forgettable band called The Boomtown
Rats, raised this issue with many governments and policy makers in the world.
He highlighted the excesses of food such as the infamous “EU butter mountain”
of which politicians finally acknowledged.
There was slight embarrassment, but that
did not change the fact that there would continue to be excess food produced
that was not allowed to be sold, or given away due to fiscal policies of food
trade.
In Britain, there is a very unsatisfactory
explanation given to behaviour that is perhaps unsavoury, but cannot be
changed - “that’s cricket”.
Making sense of the senseless
So at the tender age of eight, I devised
my own understanding of ‘lost food” - food which is good to eat, but for a
number of reasons, is simply thrown away.
I learnt that many reasons can leave
millions of people to die unnecessarily: regulations, trade deals, politics,
logistics, or sometimes it can be because it’s cheaper to throw away food than
it is to go through the bureaucracy to give it to the poor.
Like most other people, I got on with my
life and did not focus on the politics of food, as I was busy trying to carve
out a career as a journalist.
However, I did spend some time travelling
across Africa, and spent several months waitressing in a restaurant in Cape
Town.
The Ferrymans experience
It was here at The Ferrymans my eyes were
truly exposed to the levels of food waste disposed of every day. Not just the
excess of everyone’s plate, but the food that had to be ready in case someone
ordered (our menu was far too varied). So inevitably there was a very large
binload of perfect food being trashed every single day.
It would not have been so bad, but the
kitchen staff (who were the worst paid of the restaurant staff) were often
underfed themselves. Most lived in shanty towns on the edge of the city. Many
had families to support with absent husbands, leaky roofs and the constant need
to provide food.
I suggested to the restaurant owners to
donate some of this top class ‘lost food” to these women. The answer was a
resounding no.
On reflection, it was for obvious reasons;
this would lead to the staff over ordering, over cooking, and et cetera, to
create a large pile of leftover food which they could then bring home to feed
their families.
I understood that argument - but it still
lay uneasy. How could we be throwing away so much food in a country where many
people were so desperately under nourished? Something had to be done.
So I did some research and contacted a
local soup kitchen in Cape Town. They said they would be delighted to take the
food. My bosses at the restaurant agreed to donate the lost food on the
following conditions: the soup kitchen should come at the same time every
night, they had to bring the boxes to pack the food, and no
way was any homeless person could ever be
allowed to come near our restaurant looking for food.
So we started this daily collection at
10pm every night - and it worked very well - for several months. Then I left to
continue my travels. With no-one pursuing the management to donate the food -
they slipped back into most restaurants’ default mode. Throw away lost food.
It’s less hassle.
We are all to blame
That was 20 years ago and thankfully the
world has changed. People realise that our way of life is unsustainable - our
resources are running out and the population is growing. We cannot feed more
people. Climate change will create climate refugees and add more pressure to
global governments. South-East Asia is one of the most food insecure regions of
the world. So what is the solution?
Since we throw away 33% of all food
produced, there is an easy solution. We can produce less and just be clever and
use the food we are currently throwing away.
It costs the Malaysian government billions
of ringgit just to dispose of the 'lost food” into landfills. This is money
that could be spent on healthcare and education. Food products are more
expensive to the customer, because companies include the cost of “lost food” in
the price.
The damage to the environment is enormous.
Food in packaging which is crammed into landfills creates a methane soup that
damages the land, water and surrounding air. It is 20 times more damaging than
the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
We spend much time complaining about the
haze caused by the logging in Sumatra, but we are quite happy to contribute to
this environmental hazard ourselves.
If we are honest, we are all to blame -
global governments, regulators, food manufacturers, and consumers. However, the
good news is that if we all decide to change our behaviour just a little, we
can make a huge difference.
Currently there is enough “lost food”
thrown away to feed all the hungry on the planet four times over. Maybe if we
divert some of the lost food their way, it would be a good start.
Happy World Food Day.
The Lost Food Project is the first foodbank in
Malaysia to have professional contracts with a number of supermarkets,
manufacturers and a wholesale market They distribute 50,000 meals a month to
over 40 charities, composting any donated food unfit for human consumption.
Suzanne Mooney lives in Kuala Lumpur with her husband and children. To get
involved, email info@thelostfoodproject.org
-800 million people go to bed hungry each
night.
That's 1 in 9 people
on a world population estimate of 7.6 billion today.
-98% of the world's hungry live in
developing regions, mostly in Asia.
Some 550 million are
in Asia and the Pacific, in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines.
Another 220 million are in Africa, in arid sub-Saharan countries like
Ethiopia, Niger and Mali. The remaining is in Latin America and the Caribbean,
in places like Guatemala and Haiti.
-75% of the world's poorest don't buy
their food - they grow it.
Many poverty-stricken
families depend on their land and livestock for both food and income, leaving
them vulnerable to natural disasters.
Drought - as a result
of climate change and unpredictable rainfall - is one of the most common causes
of food shortages in the world. It causes crop failures, kills entire herds of
livestock, and dries up farmland in poor communities that have no other means
to survive.
-Surprisingly, many hungry people live in
countries with food surpluses, not food shortages.
The issue, largely,
is that the people who need food the most simply don't have steady access to
it. In the hungriest countries, families struggle to get the food they need
because of issues such as lack of infrastructure like roads and storage
facilities, frequent war and displacement, natural disaster, climate change,
and chronic poverty.
-1/3 of the food produced around the world
is never consumed.
Much food is wasted
in developing countries due to inadequate food production systems. Some of the
factors responsible for food losses include inefficient farming techniques,
lack of post-harvest storage and management resources, and weak market
connections.
-60% of the world's hungry are women and
girls.
In many places,
male-dominated social
structures limit the
resources women have to job opportunities, financial services and education,
making them more vulnerable to poverty and hunger. This, in turn, impacts their
children. A malnourished mother has an increased risk of delivering an
underweight baby, which can mean physical and mental stunting right from
childbirth.
-Empowering female farmers can pull 150
million people out of hunger.
Empowering women is
essential to global food security. Almost half of the world's farmers are
women, but they lack the same tools - land rights, financing, training - that
their male counterparts have, and their farms are less productive as a result.
If women and men had equal agricultural resources, female farmers could
increase their productivity enough to help lift millions of people out of
hunger.
-Every 10 seconds, a child dies from
hunger.
Poor nutrition is
responsible for nearly half (45%) of all deaths in children under the age of 5
- about 3 million children die each year because their bodies don't have enough
of the basic nutrients they need to function and grow.
-Hunger kills more people each I year than
AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
Around 9 million
people die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every year, more than double
the lives taken« by AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in 2012.
-The world produces enough food for
everyone to live a healthy, productive life.
There is now 17% more
food available per person than there was 30 years ago. If all the world's food
were evenly distributed, there would be enough for everyone to get 2,700
calories per day - which is more than the minimum 2100 requirement for proper health.
So the challenge is
not a lack of food, it's making food consistently available to everyone who
needs it. - Source: mercycorps.org & FAO
Malaysian food facts that matters
- Malaysians generate
38,000 tonnes of waste per day.
-Of this, around
15,000 tonnes is food waste.
-Of this, 8000 tonnes
- or about 60% - is avoidable food waste.
-And of the 8,000
tonnes, 3,000 tonnes is still edible.
-The 3,000 tonnes of
food could have fed 2 million people - in other words, all the people of Kuala
Lumpur.
-The average weight
of our meal is 450g.
-A quarter of an
average Malaysian's income is spent on food and beverages.
-A household of 5
people spends an average of RM900 on food.
-With 1/4 of food
wasted during preparation, production and consumption, RM225 goes into the bin
every month, or RM2,700 a year - or more than 1 month's pay to the urban worker
earning the mean monthly wage of RM2,400.
-Malaysia's food
import bill is between RM35 billion and RM40 billion.
-Diverting food waste
from landfills will not only conserve limited landfill space, but also help to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Food for thought:
A bunch of harvested bananas that falls
off a truck is considered food loss. Food left to spoil, left uneaten, or
discarded, is food waste.
"Food waste is about attitude and
mindset, while food loss is more about technology," says Dr Ainu Husna
Suhaimi, head secretariat of the MYSaveFood Initiative.
