Here's a sober statistic: today we produce more food than ever, yet more than two in ten people are hungry. And while more than 800 million people are undernourished, they are outnumbered by 1.4 billion who are overweight. Feeling queasy? We should. How about this:
According to the "The Prudential Soggy Lettuce Report, 2004", the average consumer throws away £424 worth of food every year.
That's 3 years ago. You can rest assured that in the US that figure can be multiplied by 2 even 3. Globalisation, via the food and chemical companies, supermarkets and transporters as well as government subsidies have to carry some of the blame.
Follow me over the jump.
The reality is that globally far more obesity than undernutrition exists. How did we get there? A variety of reasons. China typifies the changes, with a major shift in diet from cereals to animal products and vegetable oils accompanied by a decline in physical work, more motorised transport and more television viewing (yep, that's how we become couch potatoes, a point to consider as I recently read that the average Japanese man walks 6,4km a day while almost a quarter of US adults may only walk between 1 000 and 3 000 steps a day).
Fast food, the precursor of TV dinners, must also shoulder part of the blame. The proliferation of convenience stores and supermarket contribute to this phenomenon as well. I remember shopping for the first time in a supermarket, in London, in 1967. I bought just about everything I laid my eyes on, forgetting the old adage that "my eyes got bigger than my stomach"! It goes without saying that quite a bit of that day's shopping ended up in the bin. Over the years I've learnt again how to buy food for the day, not for the week. It is more economic, less wasteful and a fresher produce ensures a healthy dinner. I recently came to the conclusion that if were to subsidise fruit and vegetable production, people would consume more of it and we would have a healthier diet. But that's another battle.
The primary reason for writing this diary is because I have finished reading Raj Patel's excellent book called "Stuffed or Starved", a disturbing and thought provoking book in which he challenges traditional attitudes towards food production, supply and demand. The author, a well known activist who has been tear-gassed on four continents argues a connection between obesity and hunger. He urges us to pay closer attention to biotechnology and a number of interventions by biotech companies of which he is very critical. The strength of the book, for me, is Patel's analysis of the historical perspective he brings to the table, so to speak. Well worth a read as it does focus on the worrying aspects of the food industry such as the major food producers being inter-connected to each other through a narrow and powerful group of intermediaries, shedding light on price-fixing, political lobbying and other abuses. A good companion piece toFast Food Nation, if you did enjoy that explosive expose of the fast food world.
Lastly, trawling the "internets", I came across this little nugget of information which brings home Patel's point, some unsettling restaurant industry facts that would make you dizzy with hunger! Bon appetit!