New Report on Food Waste

A new report – “Food losses and waste in the context of sustainable food systems” by The High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE), takes a look at current trends of food waste. The report outlines causes, trends and solutions that will help address this global phenomenon.

Currently, our agricultural sector uses 28% of land and other resources, such as water, fertilizers, manpower, energy and more, to grow food that is lost or thrown away. As the University of Auckland writes in their blog: “Agriculture is [also] responsible for a majority of threats to at-risk plant and animal species tracked by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).”

For more information about these statistics, visit and read the report that lists food waste impacts on our natural resources. It was prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

You can also watch and share this animated video with you friends to help spread awareness about food waste. After all, to create a healthy and a sustainable food system we need to start locally, working on our own refrigerators and trashcans.

Crazy Food Facts

Considering how much food we consume throughout the day and our entire life span, we have become quite uninterested with where it comes from. And despite access to unlimited online information, we know very little about our food sources.

In fact, it seems the only thing that we look at in food is its appearance. Considering our global trend to change appearances of everything and anything, this is the least helpful source of information. So, while we are attracted to perfect looking things, in today’s world, perfect is probably filled with lots of imperfections. And that beautiful green apple you’re about to sink your teeth into might be GMO and laced with chemicals.

To help unveil the curtain big food corporations have placed in front of our eyes, BuzzFeed prepared a nice little article to help us see what’s really happening behind closed doors of supermarkets. Are you ready to take a look? If so, click here. If you are shocked by what you see, share it with your friends. They need to know these facts.

Careful eating!
Hokuma

Our experience on No Food Day

Grumbling stomach. Cold fingers. Bad breath. A racing mind. And zero energy. So why would anyone put themselves through 24 hours of hunger by choice?

Our team at Say No Food Waste gave no second thoughts about joining the No Food Day campaign created by EndingHunger.org on October 12, 2013. The idea is simple – raise awareness and stand in solidarity with the many individuals that go hungry on a daily basis.

There were a lot of people asking us what this day of hunger would accomplish. That all depends on how one decides to look at this. An individual by himself can’t accomplish much. But what one individual can do is inspire others to become the change they wish to see in the world. Through a ripple effect, others slowly join and what started out as a radical idea becomes a common movement, even a rational idea.

In this blog entry we would like to explain a little about our decision to partake in this campaign and reflect on what we learned. Especially since today we are celebrating World Food Day!

Joining the campaign was simple – to get a taste of a life with no food. Being fortunate enough to buy the food we like (humus, sushi, salads, and more) we wanted to challenge ourselves to live a day in a life of those who are less fortunate.

This is what we experienced. The day started out fine. Although we are big fans of nice breakfasts, going today without any was rare, but for this cause something we were willing to accept. Instead of a regular breakfast we had a nice glass of warm water. Quickly we realized that the trick to not getting hungry is staying busy. The house was cleaned, floors were vacuumed and the groceries were bought.

Things started getting tough during lunch time, when people around began preparing their lunch and smells of delicious food floated in all directions. But with determination even this phase became a thing of the past. At around evening though, at about 7, things got really tough. Suddenly warm cups of water were not enough, the stomach began talking, and all the commercials on TV were about food. Seeing the juicy burgers, circular pizzas and endless hot fries dancing on the screen made the fast really hard. But being so focused on food, it was easy to catch that most of the commercials on-screen were promoting foods that are cheap, fast and really unhealthy. No wonder those who lack money and feel hungry buy things that are affordable, but very unhealthy. Also, fast food is easy to eat and prepare, so those who are running all day hungry have no time to prepare food and instead grab something on the go.

Having completed this challenged, we have a sense of accomplishment! For those wondering whether it was worth joining this 24 hour campaign, the answer is YES! Not only did it show that being hungry sucks! It also showed that living hungry is possible, and maybe that is the biggest problem. Those around us never notice whether we are hungry or not. Fact is, even if you are hungry you continue living your life and even make it as busy as possible to get your mind off hunger. So this problem gets swept under the carpet and is rarely discussed in public. And if you don’t talk or think about a problem, there is no way for it to get addressed and eventually solved.

Today, we are celebrating a day of food and abundance. World Food Day is a complete opposite of No Food Day, but the two go hand in hand. As billions of people have the possibility to put food on the table, billion others spend days running on nothing. While we stood in solidarity with those who campaign for hunger for one day, we can’t forget those who campaign for it on a daily basis. We hope that all of our readers and fans join this campaign in the coming years, and continue to participate if they joined this year. Such campaigns help us become aware of hunger and appreciate the value of food. So please, if you want to support and help those who are hungry in other ways than fasting, remember not to waste food. And if you have too much, always share it with those around you. Together we can make hunger and food waste a thing of the past.

Enjoy the rest of your World Food Day. And as you attend or host dinner parties remember that hunger is a problem we have yet to solve. So don’t be fooled by all the food you see around you, for some eating it is just a dream.

By Hokuma Karimova

agriCULTURE

In my last blog post called „What is the noblest profession in the world?“ I claimed that we should give more credit to farmers for what they do for us. Today I would like to go back to the roots, when agriculture was created by the first farmers.

A couple of thousand years ago the only way for a civilization to survive was the implementation of an agricultural strategy. If you look closer at the history of different civilizations, such as China, Mezopotamia or Egypt you will see that they were all situated close to rivers. Egypt was a very fast growing civilization thanks to the Nile river, which later appeared to be the longest river in the whole world. The Egyptians were able to cultivate crops on a desert thanks to their new invention – the irigation system. Nowadays our survival is never linked to the work of farmers but rather to our own work for which we get money.

I spent some time thinking about the ethymology of the word agriculture. It comes from the latin word agricultura, where ager means field and cultura means culture. So agriculture at the beginning was about bringing some culture to the fields. Culture is all the heritage and knowledge that humanity has gathered throughout the years. In fact farmers were the first people that started explaining how nature works. In ancient civilizations agriculture scientists were very important people, because they were using their knowledge to get from nature as much as they could to feed as many people as possible.

I would like you to think a little bit about the verb cultivating. It is a derivative of the word culture and is not only used to describe our actions with the crops but also to say that we care about our tradition and customs. Probably people first used the combination of the words „cultivating crops“ then „cultivating tradition“.

People from higher social classes know very well what it means to have culture. After all, when a new rich comes to a black-tie banquets it is quite common to hear: „Oh, this man has no culture!“ If a farmer came to such an event the reaction would probably be the same.

I know I used a lot of cliches in this post, but it was easier to present my message this way. I wanted to show you a picture of the southern part of the Brazilian Amazon region. The state is called Mato Grosso, which in Portuguese means a thick forest. Now it is getting dominated by soya plantation which is changing its natural structure. My question to you is: Is it bringing culture to the fields?

Posted by Piotr Wielezynski

Countries and their interesting food exports

Italy and pasta. Greece and feta. Australia and kangaroos. Those are the usual connections that jump on the mind when thinking of these three countries, but what is in the mind and what is in real life can be very different.

A 2011 article by Investopedia published some interesting findings about the exporting that happens on our global market. For instance, you would never guess that Italy surpasses New Zealand in exporting kiwis by 50 million tons!

And that salty cube of deliciousness sitting on top of your salad. It might have a Greek name, Feta, but it most likely came from Canada. The vast farmlands and a less expensive option has helped Canada surpass Greece as a global exporter of feta.

Or how about the camel meat that comes from Australia? Despite kangaroo being a big symbol for the country “down under“, sometimes even making it on a few plates in the form of a stake, it is the camel that gets the spotlight. Without any natural predators the camel population has been growing and growing and soon could reach the peak of the meat exportation chart.

But let’s take a look at America. Around the world it gets a bad name for its culture of fast food and soda. The famous staples like Coca Cola and McDonalds can be found in the hardest to reach places of the world. For example, a 3 liter Coca Cola bottles are already being flown into the Amazonian communities of Ecuador because the locals like to drink it. Yet, don’t be too quick to judge. Turns out America is also an exporter of something very healthy, ginseng. Yes, the widely used plant in Chinese culture is shipped from the USA anually by 60 tonnes. If you’re wondering why you haven’t noticed this it might be a problem of location. Most of it is grown in Wisconsin.

Another interesting mention is of whiskey from Japan, which has won numerous blind tastings and scored hire than Scottish whiskey. With so many shocking facts it might be time for us to stop assuming things about our food system and start taking a closer look at it. Who knows what else we might find?

You are what you eat

‘You are what you eat’. A phrase we heard so often that we have stopped paying attention to what it actually means. Or maybe, we never grasped this idea in the first place? After all, it is made of 5 little words that we use constantly on a daily basis.

Food, after water, is our most important need. It keeps us energized, keeps our body moving and our hearts beating. It’s like gasoline and our bodies are cars. Just as car’s come in different shapes and sizes, so does gasoline, which can be cheaper or more expensive depending on its quality. So, if you put a cheap gasoline in an expensive car, or even an old one, both engines will start performing worse. And after constantly feeding the engine with low quality oil, the car gets ruined and stops running.

This analogy is perfect for describing our own bodies. We all come in different shapes and sizes, but what matters most is the fuel we put into ourselves. Whether your body is in tiptop shape and is the latest model, or an average car, the food that you put in it will have similar effects. Good food will help keep you energized and your heart engine running for many years. Low quality food doesn’t discriminate with bodies and likes to ruin them all.

Now that we know a more broad idea behind the small phrase, we can take a look at how it plays out in real life. With information from countries in different parts of the world we can paint a picture of how our diet affects our life. To do this, we analyzed various cultures of the world and tried to see whether the food the population eats has any effect on their health.

The results we found were not surprising. People in Asia eat fish, and a lot of it! The sushi capital is Japan, and eating fish is part of their culture. In theory this diet should be very healthy, but recent rise in mercury contamination has actually made it a source of health problems. In USA, where fast food nature comes installed in every newborn, people suffer from a different illness, one that causes obesity, thanks to all the fat and processed food consumption. The healthiest people on the list are the French. In fact, their Mediterranean diet went through a phase of popularity, with everyone being eager to adopt it in hopes of getting a perfect body, without giving up on tasty food. And this is clear; on the French diet you can eat all the dairy, bread and drink all the wine you want, without becoming obese. The secret is portion control and a less sedentary lifestyle. In Africa, lack of physical and economical access to sufficient and nutritious food has left most of its population food insecure and malnourished. Currently, about one third of the continent’s population lives in chronic hunger.

So what does this picture paint? Those 5 words are very important and shouldn’t be taken so lightly. After all your food makes up who you are and how your life plays out. You can choose to be healthy or not by the type of food you put on your plate.

Resources:

1. Folaranmi, Temitope. “Food insecurity and malnutrition in Africa: Current trends, causes and consequences.”
2. Bowers, Alena. ”Healthy French Diet.”
3. NRDC. “Mercury Contamination in Fish.”

posted by Hokuma Karimova

Free Food Security Course

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the European Unionhave joined forces with the World Food Programme (WFP) and International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) to create a free online course on ‘Food Security’. This course ranges from topics such as: Communication, Climate Change and Food Security, Availability Assessment and Analysis, Nutritional Status Assessment, and other vital subjects necessary for completing an accurate assessment of the food security status in any part of the world. To learn more about our current food system click on this link to discover more about our global food security and its role in today’s world.