Sunday, October 20, 2013

With a love of food comes responsibility

Did you see photographer Peter Menzel's series of one weeks of groceries from around the world? It's all over the internet and you can check it out HERE if you haven't seen it. Beware, it's a reality check.
I started at the top thinking 'Wow Mexicans eat a lot of fruit and veggies, good for them! Though it might be wise to cut down on the coke dudes...'. USA's huge amount of junk food I found quite shocking, would they eat that every week?? Yuck. They also drink a disturbingly small amount of water... just like Australians eat way too much meat and that German family must be drunk most days... At first I found it funny to just see the difference in what people from different countries eat, every family is different of course but it gives a nice comparable overview. When I got to Mali my gaze shifted to the amount of food versus the number of people and when I got to Chad it just made my heart ache.
















Looking at the difference we must be able to eat less. How much do we not need. We don't need to eat chips, drink fizzy drinks or put sauce on everything. However I can live with that difference if only we would do something about the waste we in the (mostly) Northern hemisphere create. Look at the packaging! After Chad has eaten all it's food (which definitely does not take long) it just has a few sacks left which they most likely reuse. Japanese on the other hand probably have more waste than food. Ever wonder where that goes and what that does to our atmosphere? Not only does Chad's population not have enough food while we so clearly have too much, we are polluting their air while they don't even know it. Our concern with other countries also clearly shows when, as I look at the pictures, I know where all the countries with lots of food are... I had to look up Chad.

Bottom line: Waste as little food as possible, recycle, have a compost bin in your yard and also one for rain water, try to keep your fast food intake to a minimum and bring your own bags to the store. Instead of paper or plastic, you can say: Here use mine!





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