The New Face of Hunger

Food is my life, my world, my number one subject matter: I write about it, I rhapsodize endlessly about it, I cook it, I serve it and I eat it. I devour all things & publications related to food, where it comes from, was is ethically reared or organically grown, was the farmer/grower properly recompensed for his/her labors, is it contaminated with GM and other pertinent questions. I have made it my business over the years to understand how food gets onto our collective plates, and why. And at what cost. The costs are rising dramatically. My food bills (and yours) have increased by at least 35% over the last 12 months, if not more.

I nearly choked up on my muesli when I heard GWB’s reassuring speech a couple days ago telling the bemused reporters that there is no recession, nope, not in this world, certainly not in the parallel world he lives in. Does he know the price of a pint of milk? A gallon of gas? A loaf of plain white bread? Does Laura? I don’t think so.

In his cocooned environment, money talk is measured in trillions, not single dollars.

One thing is certain: it is again the poor and the vulnerable that will be hit by soaring food prices, and it will give rise not only to tougher times and unrest but to chronic obesity. “Obesity? You gotta be kidding! I thought this was about the new face of hunger!” 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.

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 motorized 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). Adequate nutrition is necessary for human growth and development. Obesity and malnutrition, two distinct disorders that occur when there is a mismatch between energy intake and energy consumption, can lead to serious disease. There has been a shift in recent years in the epidemiology of diseases that affect nutrition. Although malnutrition is still present in the underdeveloped world, obesity, a condition associated with excessive energy intake, has become a major public health concern in most of the developed world.

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, selling mostly processed produce with highly addictive, engineered fatty foods heavy on white starches and sugar with few vitamins or minerals and little fiber. 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 will post a series of diaries that will hopefully shed some light on how to combat rising food prices, how to start a vegetable patch and a host of other related topics.