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Hunger and food waste

ZULFIQUER AMED AMIN
THERE are 6.6 billion people in (he world, of which 4 billion live in poverty or on the borderline. Close to a billion people are starving today. But the amount of food we produce could feed 12 billion people. In a world of plenty, a huge number go hungry. One of the major causes of hunger is poverty itself, people cannot afford to buy food and hence go hungry.
The Challenge of Hunger Report (2008) finds 33 countries with ' alarming'’ (Hunger Index Score 20.0-29.9) and "extremely alarming" levels (Hunger Index Score >30) of hunger. Another 32 countries come in the bracket of a "serious" hunger situation. When over 9 million people die worldwide each year because of hunger and malnutrition some 1.2 billion, mostly in developed countries, suffer from obesity. Many countries are faced with food shortages and food riots, while other countries throw away food.
In the UK, 6.7 million tonnes of wasted food amounts to £10.2 billion each year. Official surveys indicate that every year more than 350 billion pounds of edible food are available for human consumption in the United States. Of that total.
nearly 100 billion pounds are lost by retailers, restaurants and consumers. According to the US Census Bureau, 35.9 million people live below the poverty line in America.
An estimate from the ministry of food processing says that Rs. 580 billion worth of agriculture food items get wasted in India every year, resulting in artificial demand, price hike and food shortage. How does one explain that 200 million people in India, supplier of 80% of Switzerland's wheat, suffer from malnutrition? Food stocks are piling up in India, and yet the country is home to a fourth of the world's poor and hungry.
In Bangladesh, the same wasting practices are rampant. In any governmental or social ceremony, the continuing insanity of food waste at times masks our true economic position and violates all ethical norms.
In Sweden, families with small children throw out about a quarter of the food they buy. a recent study found. The mass wastage of fruit and vegetables is only part of the story, though. The EU's common fisheries policy results in between 40 and 60 percent offish caught by trawlers being thrown back into the sea dead, because there is no quota trading system in
Iceland.
Grocery stores discard products because of spoilage or minor blemishes. Restaurants throw away what they don't use. And consumers toss out everything from bananas that have turned brown to last week's Chinese leftovers. In 1997, one estimate showed that two years ago, 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States were never eaten.
Using the food diaries, WRAP in UK estimated that the Britons toss away a third of the food they purchase, adding up to 4.4 million apples, 1.6 million bananas, 1.3 million yoghurt pots, 660,000 eggs, 440,000 ready meals, 1.2 million sausages and 2.8 million tomatoes.
In a globalised food system, where we are all buying food at the same international market place, that means we are taking food out of the mouths of the poor. Buying food that is often wasted reduces overall supply and pushes up the price, making grain less affordable for the poor in other parts of the world.
Rising food prices are having impacts across the world, but especially among poor people in low-income developing countries. Since 2000, a year of low food prices, wheat prices in international markets have more than tripled, corn prices have doubled, and rice prices rose to unprecedented levels in March 2008. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), its index of food prices in March 2008 was 80 points higher than in March 2007, a rise of 57%.
In 2007, the index rose by 36% over its
2006 level. Such increases in food prices have raised concerns about the ability of poor people to meet their food and nutri lion needs and, in a number of countries, have lead to civil unrest. The World Bank has estimated that more than 100 million people are being pushed into poverty as a result of food-price escalation.
One way of dealing with food waste is to reduce its creation. Consumers can reduce their food waste output at point-of-purchase and in their homes by adopting some simple measures; planning when shopping for food is important, spontaneous purchases are shown as being the most wasteful: proper knowledge of food storage prevents foods from becoming inedible.
Every effort should be undertaken to counter supermarket "bogof" (buy one, get one free) offers that encourages shoppers to buy food they do not need and which ends up unused in bins.
There are practical ways to end the gluttony. Watch your portion sizes and make sure that plates are completely cleared at mealtimes. Householders should start making shopping lists, freeze ingredients and make use of leftovers to ensure they eat up everything. During the Second World War, a government poster proclaimed: "A Clear Plate Means A Clear Conscience." Sixty years on, we should salute the sentiment.
More than enough food is produced to feed the global population. Distribution and access to food are the problems --many are hungry, while at the same time many over-eat: many waste the food they buy, and all the resources used to grow,
ship and produce the food along with it. We are providing food to take care of not only our necessary consumption but also our wasteful habits. Whereas, merely eliminating the wastage of the millions of tonnes of food that are thrown away annually in the US and UK alone could lift more than a billion people out of hunger.
There are solutions for this issue, but we only lack the zeal, urge, and motivation to adopt them. We have to stand against this kind of egregious loss of resources along the food chain and across the society.
The persistence of a scourge like hun-
ger even today among large sections of the world population, in spite of astronomical distances covered by science and technology, perhaps remains the greatest contradiction and challenge within the contemporary world system. The failure to be food secured is due to human, not natural, foibles. If the losses and wastage go unabated pressure on natural resources will intensify, with millions more to be added to the deaths from starvation.
Dr Zuifiquer Ahmed Amin is a physician and specialist in Public Health Administration and Health Economics writes from Kuwait.