A Reality Check On World Hunger
Includes a morality check for each individual
Food is a RIGHT, not a privilege.
While many claim to embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing, the fact of the matter is that we live and operate in a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.
We live under an economic system where the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations and where massively complex systems of productions ensure that all the products we buy will have detrimental impacts most of which we may never even consider.
We live in a complex, industrial, mass-production economy driven by profit, abuses of humans, animals, and the earth abound at all levels of production [from acquisition to raw materials to production to transportation] and in just about every product we buy. Sweatshop labor, rainforest destruction, global warming, displacement of indigenous communities, air and water pollution, eradication of wildlife on farmland as 'pests', the violent overthrow of popularly elected governments to maintain puppet dictators compliant to big business interests, open-pit strip mining, oil drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, union busting, child slavery, and payoffs to repressive regimes are just some of the many impacts of the seemingly innocuous consumer products we consume every day.
We live in an economic system where sellers only value land and commodities relative to their capacity to generate profit. Consumers are constantly being bombarded with advertising telling them to discard and replace the goods they already have because this increases sales. This practice of affluent societies produces an amount of waste so enormous that many people can be fed and supported simply on its trash.
We are wasteful consumers.
Once we realize that it's not a few bad products or a few egregious companies responsible for the social and ecological abuses in our world but rather the entire system we are working in, we begin to realize that, as workers, we are cogs in a machine of violence, death, exploitation, and destruction. Of course, the high level managers of the corporations bear the greatest responsibility of all for they make the decisions which causes the destruction and waste. But you don't have to own stock in a corporation or own a factory or chemical plant to be held to blame.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, we’re already in those desperate times. The consequences of environmental destruction caused by global capitalism, and the binge-and-purge consumption pattern it depends on for growth of ‘shareholder value’ could well be irreversible and could ultimately end, not just the comfortable life as we know it, but life on this planet.
Most of us are complicit in the suffering of our fellow humans and animals, as well as the environmental destruction of the Earth, even those who appear to be fighting for justice. Expecting the US government to alleviate hunger asks us to look again for a savior to the problems WE must face AS GLOBAL CITIZENS. Foreign aid can only reinforce, not change, the status quo; also, rich icons like U2 front man Bono can do nothing to halt this rapidly deteriorating situation because he and Bush both operate within the very system that is preventing the hungry from being fed and the homeless from finding shelter.
Capitalist mass production is a system based on manipulating consumers into feeling compelled to work to make money to buy products, even goods that are destructive to the consumer and our world. Humans are the only animals who consume resources in great excess of our immediate needs. Industrial mass production allows the production, sale, and marketing of goods to take place on a scale that is jeopardizing the future of the planet.
Capitalism views all things in relation to their capacity to create or limit profits, and thus animals [human and nonhuman] and the Earth are simply viewed as raw materials, to be exploited in whatever way will produce the most profits.
Carefully considering the impacts of every stage of production, on living beings and the planet at every stage of production would curtail the enormous profits necessary to keep an industrial mass production system working. Moreover, the drive under capitalism for constant economic growth is also a drive for every increasing consumption and massive expenditures to create in us the desire to consume goods that wouldn't otherwise want or need.
To live in harmony with other beings and our planet, we need to go beyond 'responsible shopping.' We must simplify our lives, DECREASE consumption, and thus shrink our economic needs. In so doing, we limit the time that we must devote to waged labor, and regain control of our time, the most precious commodity in our lives. By recovering goods instead of buying them and questionng the need for the products marketed to us in the first place, we curtail our need to finance exploitation from our product purchase using funds from jobs where we either are exploited or exploit others.
The world is polarized between the haves and have-nots. On the sunny side of the street some individuals are so rich they can afford to live in castles or mansions. They can travel around the globe in hours instead of weeks, and they throw away enough food to feed a small country. Some 35 percent of all food in the United Kingdom goes to waste. How many of the estimated 200 million children who go to bed each night starving would that help feed? The United States alone produces enough to feed the whole world several times over.
Simultaneously, on the darker side of the street, people die unnecessarily of easily remedied ailments and/or lack of food. Every night, millions go to bed starving, our city streets are barracks to armies of the homeless, and the planet we depend on for our existence is being poisoned to death by carbon emissions and industrial pollution.
Why so much hunger? What can we do about it? To answer these questions we must unlearn much of what we have been taught. The following is from:World Hunger: 12 Myths, 2nd Edition, by Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins and Peter Rosset, with Luis Esparza [fully revised and updated, Grove/Atlantic and Food First Books, Oct. 1998]
Myth 1
Not Enough Food to Go AroundReality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,500 calories a day. That doesn't even count many other commonly eaten foods - vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs-enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most "hungry countries" have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.
Myth 2
Nature's to Blame for FamineReality: It's too easy to blame nature. Human-made forces are making people increasingly vulnerable to nature's vagaries. Food is always available for those who can afford it—starvation during hard times hits only the poorest. Millions live on the brink of disaster in south Asia, Africa and elsewhere, because they are deprived of land by a powerful few, trapped in the unremitting grip of debt, or miserably paid. Natural events rarely explain deaths; they are simply the final push over the brink. Human institutions and policies determine who eats and who starves during hard times. Likewise, in America many homeless die from the cold every winter, yet ultimate responsibility doesn't lie with the weather. The real culprits are an economy that fails to offer everyone opportunities, and a society that places economic efficiency over compassion.
Myth 3
Too Many PeopleReality: Birth rates are falling rapidly worldwide as remaining regions of the Third World begin the demographic transition—when birth rates drop in response to an earlier decline in death rates. Although rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many countries, nowhere does population density explain hunger. For every Bangladesh, a densely populated and hungry country, we find a Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia, where abundant food resources coexist with hunger. Costa Rica, with only half of Honduras' cropped acres per person, boasts a life expectancy—one indicator of nutrition —11 years longer than that of Honduras and close to that of developed countries. Rapid population growth is not the root cause of hunger. Like hunger itself, it results from underlying inequities that deprive people, especially poor women, of economic opportunity and security. Rapid population growth and hunger are endemic to societies where land ownership, jobs, education, health care, and old age security are beyond the reach of most people. Those Third World societies with dramatically successful early and rapid reductions of population growth rates-China, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Cuba and the Indian state of Kerala-prove that the lives of the poor, especially poor women, must improve before they can choose to have fewer children.
Myth 4
The Environment vs. More Food?Reality: We should be alarmed that an environmental crisis is undercutting our food-production resources, but a tradeoff between our environment and the world's need for food is not inevitable. Efforts to feed the hungry are not causing the environmental crisis. Large corporations are mainly responsible for deforestation-creating and profiting from developed-country consumer demand for tropical hardwoods and exotic or out-of-season food items. Most pesticides used in the Third World are applied to export crops, playing little role in feeding the hungry, while in the U.S. they are used to give a blemish-free cosmetic appearance to produce, with no improvement in nutritional value.
Alternatives exist now and many more are possible. The success of organic farmers in the U.S. gives a glimpse of the possibilities. Cuba's recent success in overcoming a food crisis through self-reliance and sustainable, virtually pesticide-free agriculture is another good example. Indeed, environmentally sound agricultural alternatives can be more productive than environmentally destructive ones.
Myth 5
The Green Revolution is the AnswerReality: The production advances of the Green Revolution are no myth. Thanks to the new seeds, million of tons more grain a year are being harvested. But focusing narrowly on increasing production cannot alleviate hunger because it fails to alter the tightly concentrated distribution of economic power that determines who can buy the additional food. That's why in several of the biggest Green Revolution successes—India, Mexico, and the Philippines—grain production and in some cases, exports, have climbed, while hunger has persisted and the long-term productive capacity of the soil is degraded. Now we must fight the prospect of a 'New Green Revolution' based on biotechnology, which threatens to further accentuate inequality.
Myth 6
We Need Large FarmsReality: Large landowners who control most of the best land often leave much of it idle. Unjust farming systems leave farmland in the hands of the most inefficient producers. By contrast, small farmers typically achieve at least four to five times greater output per acre, in part because they work their land more intensively and use integrated, and often more sustainable, production systems. Without secure tenure, the many millions of tenant farmers in the Third World have little incentive to invest in land improvements, to rotate crops, or to leave land fallow for the sake of long-term soil fertility. Future food production is undermined. On the other hand, redistribution of land can favor production. Comprehensive land reform has markedly increased production in countries as diverse as Japan, Zimbabwe, and Taiwan. A World Bank study of northeast Brazil estimates that redistributing farmland into smaller holdings would raise output an astonishing 80 percent.
Myth 7
The Free Market Can End HungerReality: Unfortunately, such a "market-is-good, government-is-bad" formula can never help address the causes of hunger. Such a dogmatic stance misleads us that a society can opt for one or the other, when in fact every economy on earth combines the market and government in allocating resources and distributing goods. The market's marvelous efficiencies can only work to eliminate hunger, however, when purchasing power is widely dispersed.
So all those who believe in the usefulness of the market and the necessity of ending hunger must concentrate on promoting not the market, but the consumers! In this task, government has a vital role to play in countering the tendency toward economic concentration, through genuine tax, credit, and land reforms to disperse buying power toward the poor. Recent trends toward privatization and de-regulation are most definitely not the answer.
Myth 8
Free Trade is the AnswerReality: The trade promotion formula has proven an abject failure at alleviating hunger. In most Third World countries exports have boomed while hunger has continued unabated or actually worsened. While soybean exports boomed in Brazil-to feed Japanese and European livestock-hunger spread from one-third to two-thirds of the population. Where the majority of people have been made too poor to buy the food grown on their own country's soil, those who control productive resources will, not surprisingly, orient their production to more lucrative markets abroad. Export crop production squeezes out basic food production. Pro-trade policies like NAFTA and GATT pit working people in different countries against each other in a 'race to the bottom,' where the basis of competition is who will work for less, without adequate health coverage or minimum environmental standards. Mexico and the U.S. are a case in point: since NAFTA we have had a net loss of 250,000 jobs here, while Mexico has lost 2 million, and hunger is on the rise in both countries.
Myth 9
Too Hungry to Fight for Their RightsReality: Bombarded with images of poor people as weak and hungry, we lose sight of the obvious: for those with few resources, mere survival requires tremendous effort. If the poor were truly passive, few of them could even survive. Around the world, from the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, to the farmers' movement in India, wherever people are suffering needlessly, movements for change are underway. People will feed themselves, if allowed to do so. It's not our job to 'set things right' for others. Our responsibility is to remove the obstacles in their paths, obstacles often created by large corporations and U.S. government, World Bank and IMF policies.
Myth 10
More U.S. Aid Will Help the HungryReality: Most U.S. aid works directly against the hungry. Foreign aid can only reinforce, not change, the status quo. Where governments answer only to elites, our aid not only fails to reach hungry people, it shores up the very forces working against them. Our aid is used to impose free trade and free market policies, to promote exports at the expense of food production, and to provide the armaments that repressive governments use to stay in power. Even emergency, or humanitarian aid, which makes up only five percent of the total, often ends up enriching American grain companies while failing to reach the hungry, and it can dangerously undercut local food production in the recipient country. It would be better to use our foreign aid budget for unconditional debt relief, as it is the foreign debt burden that forces most Third World countries to cut back on basic health, education and anti-poverty programs.
Myth 11
We Benefit From Their PovertyReality: The biggest threat to the well-being of the vast majority of Americans is not the advancement but the continued deprivation of the hungry. Low wages-both abroad and in inner cities at home-may mean cheaper bananas, shirts, computers and fast food for most Americans, but in other ways we pay heavily for hunger and poverty. Enforced poverty in the Third World jeopardizes U.S. jobs, wages and working conditions as corporations seek cheaper labor abroad. In a global economy, what American workers have achieved in employment, wage levels, and working conditions can be protected only when working people in every country are freed from economic desperation.
Here at home, policies like welfare reform throw more people into the job market than can be absorbed-at below minimum wage levels in the case of 'workfare'-which puts downward pressure on the wages of those on higher rungs of the employment ladder. The growing numbers of 'working poor' are those who have part- or full-time low wage jobs yet cannot afford adequate nutrition or housing for their families. Educating ourselves about the common interests most Americans share with the poor in the Third World and at home allows us to be compassionate without sliding into pity. In working to clear the way for the poor to free themselves from economic oppression, we free ourselves as well.
Myth 12
Curtail Freedom to End Hunger?Reality: There is no theoretical or practical reason why freedom, taken to mean civil liberties, should be incompatible with ending hunger. Surveying the globe, we see no correlation between hunger and civil liberties. However, one narrow definition of freedom-the right to unlimited accumulation of wealth-producing property and the right to use that property however one sees fit-is in fundamental conflict with ending hunger. By contrast, a definition of freedom more consistent with our nation's dominant founding vision holds that economic security for all is the guarantor of our liberty. Such an understanding of freedom is essential to ending hunger.
---------------------
In affluent homes, many times the problems of growing up under the conditions of poverty and hunger is just an abstract passing thought as one reads through the daily news. Now, I would ask you to look closely at 14-year-old Alemtsehay's daily life in Ethiopia and how complex her situation really is. She is locked in a cyclic situation in which copious lifestyles, thoughtless choices, and demands for cheap goods help to imprison her: DEVELOPMENT-ETHIOPIA:
Understanding Poverty's Impact on Children Sisay Abebe
ADDIS ABABA, Sep 9 (IPS) - When the school bell rings, Alemtsehay and her three younger sisters rush home to change out of their school uniforms and into tattered clothes to go out begging around Bole Road, one of Addis Ababa's smarter areas.
Accompanied by their five-year -old brother, they roam the streets asking passersby for money. They are each expected to bring home at least 10 birr (one dollar) a day.
"I prefer to beg around Bole, which is far from my home, because I don't want my classmates to see me and mock me as a pauper," says 14-year-old Alemtsehay, who is a grade five student.
Alemtsehay is one of the 5 million children in Ethiopia who have been left orphaned or vulnerable from AIDS. Many of them are living on the streets, sometimes making a living as sex workers.
Alemtsehay's family fell into poverty after their father died of AIDS seven years ago. Her mother is also HIV positive and cannot support her children – or two other children who joined the family after their own mother died of AIDS.
For Alemtsehay, begging is degrading but she has no other alternative to get money, feed the family and keep herself in school. At night they are harassed by men who want to use them for sex, thus exposing them to HIV.
"When you try to solve one of your problems you get caught up in another. I am now in the dilemma of starving or getting sick; some of my friends on the streets have ended up as mothers," she says.
One of these street children is Berhane Tesfaye, 16, who has a three month old baby. She conceived it with her boyfriend, another street child whom she calls her protector as he has defended her from the rougher elements on the street.
Berhane and her friend Haimanot Teklay (who is also pregnant), live only for today. They don't go to school, and spend their days smoking marijuana and chewing khat, a mildly addictive stimulant used across the Horn of Africa.
Alemtsehay and her sisters are among the lucky few: even though they are begging on the streets, they are able to attend school. According to the UN Development Programme, only 34 percent of Ethiopian children attend school.
Ethiopia has set itself the goal of education for all by 2015, but if it is to achieve this, it needs to link education policies to broader poverty reduction strategies.
An international study of childhood poverty entitled ‘Young Lives’ has found that about a quarter of all Ethiopian children are involved in the work force. On average, these children work almost six hours a day. As a result even those who are in school have no time for homework, are frequently absent and often abandon school altogether. The study, funded by the UK’s Department for International Development and co-ordinated by Oxford University, examines childhood poverty by tracking the changing lives of 12,000 children in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam over a 15-year period.
It collects information not only on their material and social circumstances, but also on their perspectives of their lives and aspirations for the future, set against the realities of their communities. By following two groups of children in each country (2000 children who were born in 2001-02, and 1000 children who were born in 1994-95) they gain insights into every phase of childhood. The younger children are being tracked from infancy to their mid-teens and the older children through into adulthood, when some will become parents themselves.
When this is matched with information gathered about their parents, it will reveal much about the intergenerational transmission of poverty, how families on the margins move in and out of poverty, and the policies that can make a real difference to their lives.
Conflicting pressure A particular focus of the study in Ethiopia is the relationship between agriculture and education polices. While it aims for universal education by 2015, government
at the same time expects economic growth to be led by labour-intensive agricultural modernisation. The researchers ask how these new policies affect children’s opportunity to study, and what impact changes in the rural labour market will have on household livelihood strategies and
the invisible contribution of children’s labour. A World Bank poverty assessment in 1999 showed that most Ethiopians felt they had a lower standard of living than in 1989, and rural inhabitants blamed the government’s shift to a free market economic policy. Small-scale farmers have been badly affected by the removal of subsidies on fertilisers, the rise in the cost of land tax and a drop in market prices for their produce. The initial stages of 'Young Lives' research have shown that these changes have had a detrimental effect on child welfare.
Parents explained that while they understood the value of education, they could no longer afford to send their children to school due to the downturn in the grain market and the loss of government support. Ethiopia is a highly indebted country whose development has declined over the last decade. Much of Ethiopia’s population lives in poverty. The UNDP’s Human Poverty Index 2002 places Ethiopia 83rd amongst 85 developing countries. According to the United Nations Children's Fund 'State of the World's Children Report 2008', 12 percent of Ethiopian children die before they reach the age of five. The recent drought has made the situation far more critical, with 75,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition and 4.6 million people experiencing food shortage.
According to Bekele Tefera, policy co-ordinator of Save the Children in Ethiopia, children deserve special attention from government particularly at times of economic crisis and drought. But at present, this assistance is minimal. A dedicated government body at the level of ministry or a commission to carry out programmes aimed at children is required.
Zelalem Adugna, HIV/AIDS advisor to Save the Children, says Ethiopia has a lot to learn from countries like Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Namibia which have successfully implemented policies for children.
When asked about the attention they get from government Alemtsehay and Berhane say there is no support. "Thanks to God, even if we suffer psychologically as child beggars, we get our daily subsistence from the passersby," says Alemtsehay.
* With additional reporting by Kathryn Strachan in Johannesburg. (END/2008)
Source: ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43836--------------------
Below, some 'food for thought.' All individuals who live as 'wasteful consumers' should be ashamed of the following facts. To redeem yourself from contributing to world hunger, Dr. Mercola offers some useful advice:Half of All Food Produced Worldwide is Wasted Tremendous quantities of food are wasted after production. Edible food is discarded in processing, transport, supermarkets and kitchens.
A brief authored by the Stockholm International Water Institute, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and the International Water Management Institute argues that the current food crisis is a crisis of waste.The brief states that, "More than enough food is produced to feed a healthy global population. Distribution and access to food is a problem -- many are hungry, while at the same time many overeat." However, it says, "we are providing food to take care of not only our necessary consumption but also our wasteful habits.""As much as half of the water used to grow food globally may be lost or wasted," says researcher Dr. Charlotte de Fraiture.
In the United States, meanwhile, as much as 30 percent of food, worth some $48.3 billion, is thrown away.
Sources:
Environment News Service August 22, 2008
Dr. Mercola's Comments: Millions of people across the world are facing hunger and starvation due to the current food crisis. Yet, dwindling food supplies may not be to blame this time. Rather, massive problems with our food supply system, along with astounding amounts of waste, may be directly responsible for why some people don’t have enough to eat.In poor countries, food waste happens before it ever reaches those most in need. The policy brief, "Saving Water: From Field to Fork -- Curbing Losses and Wastage in the Food Chain," found that depending on the crop, an estimated 15 to 35 percent of food may be lost in the field. Another 10 percent to15 percent is discarded during processing, transport and storage, the brief states.
In rich countries, however, production is more efficient but the waste is greater because of waste in restaurants, schools, hospitals and people’s kitchens.
"People toss the food they buy and all the resources used to grow, ship and produce the food along with it,” the report states.
It’s estimated that half of all the food produced worldwide is wasted!
How This Impacts Global Water SuppliesYou may be wondering why a report on food waste has been released by prominent international water institutes. Well, as the authors state, food waste is water waste.
In the United States, for instance, 30 percent of food is thrown away.
"That's like leaving the tap running and pouring 40 trillion liters of water into the garbage can -- enough water to meet the household needs of 500 million people," says the report.And just as there’s a global food crisis going on right now, a global water crisis has been brewing for several decades. Currently, more than one out of six people lack access to safe drinking water, and another two out of six lack adequate sanitation, according to the World Water Council.
Yet, as with food, it seems the problem isn’t about dwindling supplies so much as it’s about proper management and reducing waste.
According to researchers, up to half of the water used to grow food around the world may be lost or wasted.
How Much Food Waste is Acceptable?The problem of food waste is clearly a large-scale one, with urgent changes needed to reduce spoilage in the field, during processing and during transportation. One part of the problem is that food is now being transported all over the world before it gets consumed, whereas food produced and consumed in a local setting has less chances of spoiling.
However, vast amounts of food are wasted, particularly in developed countries, in restaurants and schools and simply because we buy more than we can consume -- or put too much on our plates when serving ourselves in cafeterias.
In fact, the report mentions a 2008 article in the New York Times that found an average family of four people in the United States throws away 112 pounds of food every month!Yet, it’s been estimated that at least half of the food thrown away in homes and restaurants across the United States isn’t bad and could easily be consumed. So, aside from purchasing less food in the first place, and therefore having an easier time eating it before it goes bad, it seems clear that knowing when a food is actually bad, and when it’s still perfectly safe to eat, would help to curb some of this excessive waste.
I believe it is important to understand many of these global issues so you can avoid being confused or deceived the next time you encounter a media report on this topic. However, these are issues that most of us will not be able to influence so it seemed appropriate to provide you with some information where you actually can make a difference in food waste -- your own home.Food Expiration Dates: When Are Foods Really Spoiled?Many processed and canned foods will last indefinitely due to the massive amounts of preservatives and processing they’ve undergone. In order to be healthy, though, you need to purchase fresh, unprocessed foods for yourself and your family. Unfortunately, these are also the foods that will go bad the fastest.
Knowing when a food is still safe to eat, and when it’s not, is not as simple as going by the expiration date though. In fact, expiration dates on foods are completely voluntary (except for those on infant formulas and some baby foods, which the U.S. government requires). And the varying terms have very different meanings. For instance:
• Sell by: This is a guide for retailers to know when to take the product off the shelf. A food will lose peak freshness after the sell-by date, but it will still be safe to eat for some time after.
• Best if used by or before: Consuming the food before this date means it’s at peak freshness and flavor, but it is not a measure of safety. In other words, it’s safe to eat foods past their “best before” date.
• Use by: This also refers to quality, and foods are still often safe after this date has passed.
• Expiration date: This is the date after which a food may no longer be safe to eat.
In your own kitchen, you can greatly cut back on food waste in the following ways:
1. Only buy small quantities of perishable foods. If you’re not sure you’ll get to it before it goes bad, don’t buy it.
2. Freeze foods that are nearing spoilage. I generally believe you should eat foods fresh, not frozen, but if you find yourself with, say, two pounds of grass-fed beef that will go bad in a day or two, and you can’t eat it in time, putting it in the freezer will extend its shelf-life.
3. Get the air out of your produce bags. Using a vacuum seal or even just pressing the air out of the bag thoroughly can double the shelf-life of your produce.
4. Keep your refrigerator at the right temperature. 25 percent of U.S. refrigerators are kept too warm to keep your food safe. Your fridge should be kept at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or 4 degrees centigrade.
5. Avoid refrigerating leftovers in a big lump. This promotes bacterial growth because the center of the “lump” cannot cool down quickly enough.
6. If a food is slightly moldy, it doesn’t mean you have to throw it out. It’s perfectly safe to just cut the spot out and eat the food.
7. To maximize how long foods stay fresh, be sure to leave enough space between refrigerated items (if your fridge is too packed, it may make it harder for the cold air to circulate).
Of course, the fresher your foods are to begin with, the longer you can expect them to last as well. Ideally, choose the freshest foods you can find, and eat them as soon as possible, as some foods, particularly vegetables, lose nutrients after they’re harvested.
Source: articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/09/11/half-of-all-food-produced-worldwide-is-wasted.aspx?source=nl