Food Is God-do we really mean, what we say?

Food-Is-God-do-we-really-mean-what-we-say

SagarWatch I Sachin Jyotishi

Annam Brahman (food is god) -According to Bhagavad Gita, the body and life in it are based on food and sustained by food. For Indians food means “Prasadam”. “Prasadam” is a sanskrit word which deontes “Sacred food” in English. But do we really mean, what we say?

We are a nation which prays before having food. Children are taught of the importance of food and the efforts go into avail it. A country with a history of frequent drought and famines certainly knows that food is to be valued and preserved. And that is why, it is worshipped  But with such a rich history, India still seems to be a country holds a rank of 100th among 119 countries on the Global Hunger Index. 

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India is the country which is the second largest in terms of population in the world. The International Food Security and Nutrition Organisation indicates that 190.7 million people are undernourished or undernutrition in India. This refers to 14.5% of the Indian population, which makes India the ground for the largest undernourished population in the world.

It is researched and speculated by the UN that around 40% of the food produced in India is wasted or lost by different means. This hits India by the blow of one lakh crore rupees every year, which also harms our GDP. India marks a rank 63 among 88 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI, UN data). Whole South Asia wastes around 2.7% of food during processing. 

Food wastage in India is deteriorating at different levels: from harvesting, transporting, processing, packaging and consuming. Most of the food wastage in India comes before it is packaged. This is caused due to the loopholes in the logistics and a dedicated infrastructure system in India. The government has eyed into this and is trying to find measures to develop better technology to reduce wastage.

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 An alarming revelation had been made by a report cited in the CSR journal. It is said that “Indians waste as much food as the United Kingdom consumes”. According to the United Nations Development Programme, up to 40% of the food produced in India is left wasted. About 21 million tons of wheat is wasted uneaten in India and 50% of all food across the world meets the same destiny and never reaches on the plates of the needy.

 This is where the gigantic and unnoticed issue of food wastage and deadly hunger in India is emerging from. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, India needs to at least double up its investment in agricultural research to increase farmers’ incomes by 2022. This is also a great cause of price-hike which is yet another issue Indians are dealing with..

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 Rural Indians have a tradition of starting their day by making the first meal for sacred animals like cows. Cows and dogs are fed for religious/astrological reasons in rural India till date, followed by various rites and rituals. It is a paradox where animals are fed, while in urban India food is being wasted in such an unholy fashion. Urban India is supposed to prioritize their quality of life on top and food is no more an object of privilege for them. 

Governments can enforce a plausible change and make the whole machinery (respective department) operate to a minimum standard. This makes the war against food wastage much easier to win. Here we suggest a detailed list of how governments around the world are coming up with solutions and empowering food waste initiatives.

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Here modern technology is a ray of hope to help reduce wastage such as well-designed rice-storage bags in the Philippines have helped cut losses of the staple grain by 15 per cent. In West Africa, solar dryers are usually used to extend the shelf life of fruits and tubers is showing promise in reducing post-harvest losses. 

Packaging techniques like vacuum packing, nitrogen flushing etc also help protect the freshness of food for longer periods. Pope Francis once rightly said “Throwing away food is like stealing from the tables of the poor and hungry” and we could not agree more with this statement. Let's fix this!

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There are so many solutions If we look around.

Australia: Recently, Australia became the first country to fix a target to reduce the amount of food waste it produces by 50% by 2030. The financial cost of food waste to the Australian economy is currently 20 billion dollars per year.

To help achieve the country’s food waste target, the Australian Government decided to invest 1.2 million dollars over two years to support food rescue organizations. The resolution is part of its Food Rescue Charities Program, which will support Second Bite, FareShare, OzHarvest, and Food Bank Australia.

Norway: Following Australia’s footsteps, in June 2017 the Norwegian government and the country’s food industry signed an agreement to halve food waste. As much as 350,000 tonnes of food end up in the bin every year in Norway. The food supply chain is responsible for food waste around 68 kg per person per year.

 During an interview with a local news website, Vidar Helgesen, Minister of Climate and the Environment, restated the importance of government and industry leaders coming together to drive change: He said food industry should be challenged to be innovative and creative in the coming years. The food industry's actions will be the deciding factor in halving food waste by 2030”.

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France: Food waste is an expensive issue in France. Each year 10 million tons of food is either lost or wasted in the country, claiming the French by the sum of16 billion Euros per year. The harmful impact on the environment is also shocking. In France, Food waste is responsible for the emission of 15.3 million tons of CO2, 3% of the country’s total CO2 emissions.

Although these figures are concerning, the French government is committed to driving change. In the past five years, it has created new laws and regulations to catalyze food waste reduction. 

In 2012, it launched a new law driving the private sector to recycle their organic waste if they produce more than 120 tons of it per year. This regulation has since been developed further. Recycling is now compulsory for all businesses, including those in the hospitality and food-service industry, that produce at least ten tonnes of organic waste per year.

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In 2016, France became the first country to ban supermarkets from dumping away unsold food. Large supermarkets are not permitted to throw away good quality food approaching its “best-before” date. Instead, they are bound to give surplus food to charities and food banks.

Italy: according to an estimate Italy wastes about 5.1m tonnes of food a year. Six months after the French law banning supermarkets from throwing away edible food was passed, the country launched a similar regulation. Unlike the French law, which penalises supermarkets that fail to comply with the rules, the Italian law focused on making it easier for companies to donate unsold food. The initiative should help Italy recover one million tonnes of food a year. 

The law has essentially relaxed regulations that had made it difficult to donate. It has clarified, for example, that food can be donated even if it is past its sell-by date. Costa Cruises – the Italian cruise line that is part of Carnival Corporation & plc, the world’s largest cruise company - has taken advantage of this law. The cruise line is now working with Winnow to prevent food waste while donating excess meals to those in need.

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Costa has cemented its role as a leading company in the sustainability field. It became the first cruise line to make a public food waste reduction target, committing to halving food waste by 2020 as part of its “4Good Food” program.

Denmark: Denmark is a new achiever in joining the fight against food waste. In 2016, the Danish minister for food, Esben Lunde Larsen, launched a subsidy scheme to combat the issue. This scheme distributed almost USD 750,000 to projects trying to tackle waste throughout the food chain.

This was a significant commitment, but the initiative wasn't the first drive to reduce food waste. The ministry had already conducted campaigns to educate consumers about best-before and use-by labels. In Denmark, it is legal to sell date-expired food so long as it is clearly labelled and shows no sign of health risk. Mr Larsen has also backed the collaboration between food producers and kitchens to make sure that “wonky vegetables”, which would otherwise be thrown, are used.

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Dubai: Food waste hurts Dubai with the cost of the equivalent of $4 billion every year. 2.7 kg of food is being wasted per person every day. To start changing these figures, the Dubai Municipality signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Winnow to encourage the use of technology to reduce food waste across the hospitality sector in the UAE.

Winnow’s technology has been helping large hotels in the UAE save more than $887,000 per year in food costs. This reduction has translated into a saving of an estimated 213 tonnes of food from landfill, the equivalent of more than 1,000 meals saved per day in Dubai.

There are so many solutions If we look around….But, Do the nation (People) really care?   In a nutshell -“Take What You Eat And Eat What You Take!”