The
holy month of Sravan has started, and the fasting season is upon us. It
is a very appropriate time for me to be writing about food! In fact, in
the last few months, I have had a lot of debate about a variety of food
topics. Get two Indians together, and they will immediately begin talking
about food. Do we eat to live or live to eat?
The most thought provoking debate, which I have heard and seen in the
most recent past is on the question of dealing with obesity in US on one
hand, and dealing with world hunger on the other. What a paradox? We have
one part of the world with less than 300 million in population who have
been over-eating or eating the wrong kind of food, and whose farmers are
paid by the government NOT to grow. On the other hand we have over a billion
people in the continent of Africa, and many parts of Asia and Central/South
America where food is in terrible shortage and most of its population
does not have enough for basic subsistence.
Let us begin with understanding the facts of world hunger. United Nations’
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reports that in 1996 more than
840 million people were hungry, and the number for 2002 has shown only
a slight improvement. Dramatic improvements have been made in some parts
of the world (like China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Nigeria and Ghana),
whereas situation has worsened in most other parts, especially Africa.
An estimated 25,000 people die every day as a result of hunger and poverty.
Each year, 6 million children under the age of 5 are affected. Ambitious
UN plans to halve world hunger by 2015 are facing failure. The world is
not even facing up to the next big problem of under-nourishment, which
is impacting over 2 billion people. Women and children are particularly
hard hit. For example, 140 million children risk sight problems due to
lack of Vitamin A in their diet.
The UN had a World Food Summit in the middle of 2002, which was considered
a waste of time by most delegates. The governments of wealthy countries
did not even attend, whereas just a few weeks before that, they had the
big guns for the NATO summit a few hundred miles away in Europe! Even
India continues to have the problem of starvation deaths despite the green
and white revolutions. The Nobel-prize winner, Amartya Sen leads ‘The
Support Group for the Right to Food Campaign’ in India. Worse is
that several hundred tonnes of food-grain are lying unused in the government
warehouses at any given point of time while the hungry are dying in other
parts of the country.
What can be done? A few solutions are presented here: (a) the world commerce
in the arms industry continues strongly. The Brazilian President has a
unique proposal. At the recent G8 summit, he recommended that taxing global
arms exports should create a global anti-hunger fund!! (b) All non-essential
food, tobacco, alcohol, affluent restaurants should be similarly taxed
and money transferred to solve the hunger problems. In India, all wedding
feasts should be taxed. (c) The UN should set up a not-for-profit storage
and distribution network across the world and facilitate the transfer
of food. Any government subsidies to stop farming or programs to throw
away excess food, milk and cheese in the ocean should be condemned strongly
and banned eventually.
While the non-western world worries about hunger, the policy makers in
US are worried about obesity!! The tobacco industry in US faced the multi-billion
lawsuits, and has amended their ways in the US (but not yet in the developing
countries where they are still growing their sales). Now, the fast food
and big packaged food companies are facing the prospects of obesity or
unhealthy food lawsuits from the consumers. 2 teenage girls in Bronx,
New York sued McDonalds in 2002 for making them obese!! So, these companies
are trying to stay one step ahead of the regulators. For instance, Kraft
Foods (maker of the Oreo cookies amongst other food) announced that it
would take measures to reduce portions in single-serving packages, develop
healthier foods and eliminate snack food promotions in the schools! McDonalds
will reduce artery-clogging trans fats from its foods. High fat, high
sugar, high calories foods have been the major profit earners for the
fast food and big food companies. If you are raising children in the west,
you know very well that Choco-Pops, Frosted Flakes and Oreo Cookies are
part of their staple diets. Eating out, especially when both parents are
working, is more common. Fast food chains are a big attraction, even for
vegetarians.
In his book Fatland, Greg Critser claims that over the years the number
of condiments, candy, snacks and bakery foods introduced over the last
decade with high fat content has increased dramatically. The proportion
of total calories obtained away from home has also increased over the
past couple of decades. Mom’s healthy food is becoming an exception.
The fast food chains offer ‘value meals’ and high saturated-fat
density, which are totally unhealthy, but very profitable and fast selling.
As a result, in 2000 nearly 20% of the population in US was obese compared
to only 12% just a decade earlier. If the problem is left unchecked than
in a few more decades we will have mostly obese people in US!
Probably we need to ‘tax’ all non-healthy food and use the proceeds
to feed the hungry!
While we worry about hunger and obesity, there is a 64-year-old Gujarati
from Kerala, Southern India who has controlled his hunger by gazing at
the sun. Mr. Hira Ratan Manek from Thiruvananthapuram believes in charging
his brain and body through sun gazing, overcoming hunger and other desires
and curing mental and physical diseases. NASA has invited him to US for
more research, and have verified that he went without food for 130 days,
when he drank only water!!! Our own Guru Maa has fasted for years only
on water. NASA can just come to our Long Island Ashram and do some research
right in their own country. |
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