We waste food, we overeat, while so many starve

Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein

• Last Updated: November 19. 2009 7:52PM UAE / November 19. 2009 3:52PM GMT

Hunger now scars the lives of more than a billion people – a new record. World leaders gathered at a UN summit in Rome this week to debate just what to do about it.

As a former Goodwill Ambassador for the World Food Programme, I sensed how it would go. The media would concentrate more on the politicians than the substance, and there would be an abundance of speeches and a series of fancy luncheons with yet more speeches.  At one such luncheon a while ago I wondered: what if I could magically transfer the 1,000 calories in the vanilla souffle in front of me to a malnourished child in the slums of Nairobi? The extra calories eaten in the US or Europe alone would end hunger in Africa.

These gratifying fantasies highlight some terrible inequities in how the world handles its food supply. In 2006 the World Food Programme produced a map charting food consumption. The “Fat Map” shows where the world’s calories go. Nations grow or shrink based on how much the average person eats. Depending on your perspective, it maps starvation or over-eating.

The maldistribution of food goes deeper than even the “Fat Map” implies. In India, for example, more than 300 million overweight people co-exist with another 300 million who starve. Chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, which often stem from overeating, are growing at a far faster rate in developing countries than in the more prosperous West. In my own region, the Middle East, obesity is skyrocketing, especially among young people.

In 2007-2008, a global food crisis surprised us as prices soared. But would the crisis have been as severe if we were not so accustomed to wasting the food we have?

We are moving to an “energy morality” with young people lobbying against wasting energy – yet there is no “food morality”, though food is organic energy.  We overeat and throw away food without a thought. Over-indulgence is viewed as hospitality, and many assume that being a good parent requires that we force-feed those we love.

Eating is even a competitive sport. This year in Taiwan, a binge-eating contest claimed the life of a 23-year-old student. Each Fourth of July in New York a young man called Joey Chestnut takes on his Japanese arch-rival Takeru Kobayashi at a hot-dog eating contest. Last year Joey wolfed down 68 hot dogs in 10 minutes, more than a week’s supply of calories for a hungry African. Kobayashi has even had a hot-dog eating contest with a large brown bear – a bizarre hit on YouTube. (The bear won.)

We pay dearly for this overconsumption. Obesity-related health spending in the US alone is between $150 billion and $200 billion – more than all foreign aid worldwide. The annual cost of extra medical care for the obese is as high as $1,400 per person;  more than 2 billion people do not earn that much in a year.

Food losses are another reflection of our excess. Food waste costs the average Briton more than £400 (Dh2,500) a year, while US households lose or throw away 14 per cent of their food, and supermarkets and restaurants throw away another 27 million tons.  Adding farm and wholesale losses brings the annual bill to more than $100 billion in the US alone. The figures will be similar in the European Union, and I suspect the Gulf states as well.

There are initiatives to tax unhealthy food, improve nutrition education and label foods to show their carbon footprint, but no broad public embrace of the need to eat less and eat responsibly. Retailers and restaurants still sell food in portion sizes and packages encouraging excess eating and waste.

It is time to recognise the energy, health and productivity losses we incur from consuming and wasting so much food. Public health campaigns worldwide, including in the Gulf states, promote the message that excess weight and lack of physical activity are linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, strokes and cancer. Is anyone listening? Well, after years of increases, the Centers for Disease Control in the US have found that obesity is levelling off.

Would cutting overeating and waste really change the contours of the “Fat Map”? Not by themselves. The UN estimates that we need $30 billion a year more invested in agriculture.  But each of us can consume more wisely and donate food we now waste to a food bank or charity. If it makes sense to save energy, why throw away food and over-eat until it endangers our health and our future?

Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, wife of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, is a UN Messenger of Peace, established the Arab world’s first food relief NGO in her homeland, Jordan, and served as a Goodwill Ambassador for the World Food Programme from 2005 to 2007