Food for the hungry and Food for our thought.

[StarVegabond]

Dear Friends,

Yesterday, i was in the mumbai airport lounge waiting for my flight, i read an article on DNA Sunday. On reading the article, I was motivated to share the key highlights (not the full article) of this to with all of you. Request you to spare some moments to read this.

What a waste !
----------------
While more than 950M people worldwide go to bed without food, scandalous amount of food is wasted in the food chain.

Wasting food has become our modern day life style

Food wastage is a global problem. India alone wastes about RS 58000 Crore worth of agriculture food items due to the lack of post harvest infrastructure.

How to reduce the food wastage
-------------------------------

Buy smart, Don't let offers tempt you to stuff that fridge with food and drinks that you won't consume. Also ensure that you store the bought food grains, rice, vegitables, meat etc properly so that you can consume it and not waste.

At parties, good food can tempt you to load your plate. Fill only to satisfy your hunger for today.

We love to cook in abundance. It's a prestige issue. Then our love for fresh food makes way for yesterday's meal to find space in that bin. First cook as per servings and learn a few left-over food recipes viz. sandwiches, soups, fried rice etc. Options are
1. store leftover corn, peas, or potatos in your freezer and use to make soups/stews
2. Blend leftover fruits, freeze in ice cube trays and add to jellies and sorbets
3. Leftover bread is ideal for making bread pudding and french toast. One can use breadcrumbs to coat patties or croutons for salads/soups.

Get Foodwise !, Keep food wastage under control, e.g.
1. if a soup/stew is too salty or spicy, add cut, raw vegitables/potatos
2. Use soggy, leafy vegitables by soaking in a bowl of cold water and adding some lemon juice to it as preservative.
3. Line the crisper section of your refregirator with newspaper, wrap vegetables with it and watch them stay fresher
4. Freshen up blemished vegetables by picking off their brown edges, sprinkling cool water and wrapping it in a towel and refrigerate it.


How can you help ?
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1. Educate children to avoid food wastage
2. if possible join a food recovery program in your area with your friends.
3. Think before you buy your groceries and donate the money saved to feed the hungry.
4. DO NOT WASTE FOOD, be an example to others.

Spare a thought for those hungry people, your comments are welcome

[comfortablynumb]

Very appropriate thread, considering the food prices nowadays. Also, a lot of people tend to take the food on their plate for granted, but we need to realise that the number of people who get 3 square meals a day is outnumbered by those who don't or are malnourished.

Let's resolve to inculcate what has been written by StarVegabond in our daily routine.

Cheers,
Vikram

[phamilyman]

What now? We feed those kids, whose parents only wanted entertainment and hoped that someone else (ideally the government) feeds them?

PS: Am all in favor of a more disciplined lifestyle, but donation to the hungry is just breeding further freeloaders in our society.
PPS: I'd much rather donate (as I do) to an orphanage!

[Surprise]

StarVegaBond, is it possible for you to provide the link to that article?

[StarVegabond]

Originally Posted by Surprise

StarVegaBond, is it possible for you to provide the link to that article?

I still have the newspaper with me, but i am not aware whether there is a online version.

[Lukeskywalker]

Nice article or writeup, it's true how we take certain things for granted in our daily lives. Time to try and change I guess.

[StarVegabond]

Originally Posted by phamilyman

What now? We feed those kids, whose parents only wanted entertainment and hoped that someone else (ideally the government) feeds them?

PS: Am all in favor of a more disciplined lifestyle, but donation to the hungry is just breeding further freeloaders in our society.
PPS: I'd much rather donate (as I do) to an orphanage!

I think, this article does not push for donating food, but in my view it advocates consuming only what we need and not wasting food.

i also agree with "consuming only what we need" and not "i want more than what i really need"

but giving food to "hungry" is indeed a need of the hour to ensure that we bridge the gap between HAVEs and HAVE NOTs

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by StarVegabond

Food wastage is a global problem.

True, improvement in agriculture methods has resulting in better yields. We are growing more than we require.

Some statistics (TED video), The global food waste scandal

Home page: http://www.tristramstuart.co.uk/

[esteem_lover]

Originally Posted by StarVegabond

At parties, good food can tempt you to load your plate. Fill only to satisfy your hunger for today.

That is correct, but that waste is pretty minimal compared to the leftovers in a party even after all the staff have taken their load full. There are so many people going hungry and we cannot take the effort to reach these leftovers to them.

I heard that even the FCI godowns were overflowing with grains.

[neel385]

Totally agree. The "haves" often take what they have for granted. And that is wrong since one must not forget the total ecosystem in which one is living. Not only is wastage irresponsible, but also indicates lack of sensitivity to ones social responsibilities.

I think that all of us must make an attempt to educate our family members about this issue. This small start can itself make a sizable contribution to society at large.

Thank you StarVegabond for bringing up this relevant topic.

[shankar.balan]

Originally Posted by StarVegabond

Dear Friends,

Yesterday, i was in the mumbai airport lounge waiting for my flight, i read an article on DNA Sunday. On reading the article, I was motivated to share the key highlights (not the full article) of this to with all of you. Request you to spare some moments to read this.

What a waste !
----------------
Absolutely agree with this post!
We have become rampant consumers who spare no thought while greedily mopping up whatever we feel like and casually discarding what we don't want.
Let us not forget that we have had famines here in India even as recently as a hundred years ago or so!
Stop, think and then act is the way to go!

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by esteem_lover

That is correct, but that waste is pretty minimal compared to the leftovers in a party even after all the staff have taken their load full. There are so many people going hungry and we cannot take the effort to reach these leftovers to them.

Very true. We asked the hotel manager about calling up any NGO and donating the excess food from a friend's reception and the response we got was, "no organization like orphanage, old age home etc is willing to come and collect any food." So apparently the hotel throws away all the leftovers. If only someone could setup a collection mechanism, lot of empty stomachs could be filled.

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by Jaguar

So apparently the hotel throws away all the leftovers. If only someone could setup a collection mechanism, lot of empty stomachs could be filled.

Nobody can depend on leftovers. Someday it might be a feast and on others, they have to go hungry. Secondly, hotels find that they have leftovers after the eating hours, say at 3PM for lunch & 11PM for dinner. So its difficult for anybody to depend on leftovers.

Food wastage in hotels is actually the top of the pyramid.
In the middle, vegetable markets waste much more. They discard everything customers won't buy.
At the bottom are the farmers, who throw everything away that is not of right shape & color.

[amitoj]

Eh. The first part of article seems to be India specific (the problem statement part) but the second part seems to be more Western lifestyle specific.

Let me explain. Specially in US, with stores like Costco etc, where you save some money by buying in bulk, people do tend to store a lot more perishable items than they can consume. Hence some part of it goes to waste. I am not sure how widespread the consumer base is of stores like Metro and Big Bazaar but last i checked, majority of folks in India buy perishable items for maximum a week, and all of it gets consumed.

But having said that, it does not mean we dont waste food. Just go to any IT company's cafeteria where you have thali system. I say IT because thats what my experience is limited to. You'll see two people sharing a thali to save money and then throw half of the food into waste.

But the food wastage at individual level is nothing compared to the wastage at the systemic level. See this article:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/n...in-going-waste

From the article:

Just this year, officials estimate that 6 million tons of India's grain worth $1.5 billion could become inedible

Still not a case for FDI in retail that will overhaul and add to the existing storage facilities??

[neofromcapone]

Something like this is needed in India, - http://www.ozharvest.org/. But something tells me there is.

There is a fascinating story of Narayan Krishnan -//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narayanan_Krishnan and his organization - http://www.akshayatrust.org/

http://youtu.be/y_3BEwpv0dM

I am sure there are countless such stories, just that we are just not aware of. Hopefully that will change soon.