Food – don’t think so much; just eat

Food is a staple in human life. We need food to survive, and heck, some of us even eat to pass time!

But it’s not everyday when people think of where and how our food came to be. Are we even eating safe? By safe I don’t mean binging or nutrient contents, but are the food we eat SAFE? Are they sustainable? Are they even ethical?

I won’t even talk about animal abuses, but those animals can be fed with such gross stuff people probably wouldn’t want to eat the meat anymore, especially when substances can actually be retained in the meat long after the animal’s dead. What can be added to meat during processing is gross too.

We all know about melamine in milk. How about arsenic in chickens? Well, good thing is that the US might be phasing it out soon. If you hadn’t click on the link to read the article, I’d bet you thought it was China. XD!

Even as I type this post, I’m not sure what’s happening to the Amazon forest right now. For years it’s been cleared to support grain cultivation and cattle-raising for food consumption. Only recently did a number of top Brazilian meat companies committed to NOT source their cattle and meat from farms that raise their cattle on deforested Amazon areas.

But not everyone is happy about that. I edited this article before for work purposes and halfway through it made me feel so pro-deforestation, even though I’m really pro-environmental. Naturally it made me feel very guilty.

Yes, I do agree with the Brazilian governor that at the end of the day, we still need to eat. Blimey, how else do you feed 6.8 billion people, and we are expected to balloon to nine billion by 2040?

But let’s not worry about that now; let’s just think about now. There’s been many reports about food crisis this year and last year. Not sure about before because I did not notice until last year.

Apparently we lack food… but is that really the case?

The answer is NO.

I do not think we are really in threat of lacking food. In fact, the real problem is the uneven distribution of food. For this, you might want to look at this report here. The numbers are staggering and rather shocking, and mind you it’s only the UK. I told that to an American friend and she scoffed, saying they waste much more, but that could only be her own opinion.

But just a snapshot of it:

The food we waste:

Items of note that are thrown away whole and unused include:

Grapes (4.8 billion a year)

Potatoes (1.9 billion a year)

Apples (1.6 billion as year)

Slices of bread (2.6 billion a year)

Tomatoes (1 billion a year)

Bread rolls (775 million a year)

Yoghurts and yoghurt drinks (484 million a year)

Sausages (440 million a year)

Chocolate and sweets (259 million a year)

Rashers of bacon (200 million)

Meat-based meals – mainly ready meals and takeaways (120 million a year)

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The food we fail to finish and clear out on our daily food plate is considered waste too. Also, how much food had been wasted simply because nobody bought them or were placed in some forgotten corner of our homes? They would eventually be thrown away… So imagine combined all that together… would anyone in Africa or other poor countries still starve?

Will end the post with this video.