Remember when you were a kid and you didn’t want to eat your vegetables but you weren’t allowed to leave the table until you did? You’d sit and sit and your parents would try to coax you in a variety of ways into nourishing yourself but finally would break out the guilt card saying, “You know, there are hungry children in Africa who’d love to eat your Brussels sprouts!” To which you’d reply with the classic snotty go-to comeback that has been used throughout the ages, “Yeah, well, why don’t you send it to them, then?” At this point I will close the curtain on the sad scene that inevitably follows…
But it brings me to those starving children in Africa whose vegetable eating habits we’ve been told to emulate since at least the ‘80s. In 1984, a dizzying amount of musicians got together to sing a Christmas song about a particularly devastating famine in Ethiopia to raise money that provided aide to those who’d suffered. You’ve all heard the song, “Do They Know It’s Christmastime?” but have you listened to the words? They’re disturbingly dark and composed to inflict maximum guilt during “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!”
These may be the scariest lyrics to a Christmas song, ever (unless you count the frightening suggestion of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”):
“But say a prayer,
pray for the other ones
At Christmastime it’s hard,
but when you’re having fun
There’s a world outside your window,
and it’s a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing
is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there
are the clanging chimes of doom
Well, tonight thank God it’s them
instead of you”
After thanking God and saying a prayer for “the other ones” I think we should maybe try to do a little more, especially for “the other ones” that live in our own town and not necessarily half way across the world. The holidays tend to be a time we may be feeling particularly guilty for our over-spending and gluttony, while still thinking of “other ones” less fortunate.
Luckily, the solution – at least part of it – is easy, something we can do year round and will actually save you money. Being mindful of how we use our resources is the best thing an individual can do everyday and not just around the holidays. While there are many, many ways to conserve, this is a column about food so let’s limit it to that.
According to a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) study commissioned in 2011 to investigate food loss, 1/3 of the food produced in the world is lost – as in not eaten, just gone.
But there is a difference in HOW it is lost between developing countries and medium/high income countries. In poorer countries, they lose food due to bad infrastructure, rodents, spoilage, etc.
In richer countries we simply throw it away. That’s right, we thoughtlessly throw out food that other people would be desperate to eat. In developed countries we toss food out because we make too much at dinner and scrape it into the garbage, we don’t eat what we buy before it spoils, we try to save it in Tupperware but it turns frightening colors in the back of our ‘frig, the food lays waste in the fields because it’s cheaper to leave it there than to pay people to pick it, or the produce isn’t perfect looking, and the boxes and cans have dents in them. We throw out food for so many reasons, most of which are rather frivolous.
If you want to do something more everyday besides writing a check to your favorite non-profit, or you’re tired of Bono making you feel guilty about starving children in Africa, remember that by simply re-evaluating the size of that heaping spoonful of mashed potatoes headed for your plate helps keep just that much more food from landing in the trash (and possibly accumulating around your waistline).
You’re excused from the table, now.
Originally Published By: St. Helens Chronicle
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