FOOD SECURITY

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations says that “food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”

Broad though this definition may be, it must be underlined that food security is primarily related whit hunger and malnutrition. FAO hunger statistics estimate that some 805 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That is about one in nine people on earth. The vast majority of these hungry people live in developing countries where 13,5% of the population is undernourished. Africa and Asia are the two continents that sadly “compete” in this issue: whereas Asia counts the higher number of undernourished people, Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the highest percentage of population (one person in four) suffering hunger.

Nevertheless, if we analyse further the FAO explanation, especially focusing on the need for food to be “safe and nutritious”, we can easily understand that also developed countries may have to deal whit food insecurity cases. Apparently, over 15 million people leaving in reach and developed countries can be classified as food insecure. It follows from this that having food security as a nation does not necessarily mean that all individuals living in that nation will be food secure.

For example, the United States Department of Agriculture reported that 14,5 % of American households were food insecure at least some time during 2010, certain groups being particularly vulnerable: women (especially low income pregnant and lactating women), victims of conflict, the ill, migrant workers, low-income urban dwellers, the elderly, and children under five.

US food security problems are obviously different from those developing countries daily face. However, they must be taken equally seriously by the local administrators. In spite of its debated meaning, the American expression “food desert” can help us understand what we are talking about. It describes a location that has limited access to healthful, nutritious food, especially in low-income neighbourhoods, where people may have easier access to fast food and junk food than to fruits and vegetables. These are the food-related problems that many reach countries have to handle, together with guaranteeing the appropriate use of food, based on knowledge of basic nutrition and care.

As different are the effects and the type of food insecurity around the world, causes are likewise various. As we may expect, poverty and natural disasters are fasten bounded whit hunger and malnutrition. But other driving factors have to do with food distribution, political will and agriculture practises. The common thought that food is not enough to feed the whole world population is apparently false. Actually, hunger seem to be caused by some wrong food distribution rather than food by insufficient production. That is why there is a concrete possibility to fight food insecurity. It is mainly a matter of political will.

Sources:

http://www.foodsecuritynews.com/What-is-food-security.htm

http://www.sustainabletable.org/280/food-security-food-access

http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story028/en/

Tristram Stuart's speech analysis

- Tristram Stuart's TED Talk 2012
- Speech analysis

http://www.ted.com/talks/dean_ornish_on_healing/transcript?language=en

0:110:11This session is on natural wonders, and the bigger conference is on the pursuit of happiness. I want to try to combine them all, because to me, healing is really the ultimate natural wonder. Your body has a remarkable capacity to begin healing itself, and much more quickly than people had once realized, if you simply stop doing what’s causing the problem. And so, really, so much of what we do in medicine and life in general is focused on mopping up the floor without also turning off the faucet.0:38I love doing this work, because it really gives many people new hope and new choices that they didn’t have before, and it allows us to talk about things that -- not just diet, but that happiness is not -- we're talking about the pursuit of happiness, but when you really look at all the spiritual traditions, what Aldous Huxley called the "perennial wisdom," when you get past the named and forms and rituals that really divide people, it’s really about -- our nature is to be happy; our nature is to be peaceful, our nature is to be healthy. And so it’s not something -- happiness is not something you get, health is generally not something that you get. But rather all of these different practices -- you know, the ancient swamis and rabbis and priests and monks and nuns didn’t develop these techniques to just manage stress or lower your blood pressure, unclog your arteries, even though it can do all those things. They’re powerful tools for transformation, for quieting down our mind and bodies to allow us to experience what it feels like to be happy, to be peaceful, to be joyful and to realize that it’s not something that you pursue and get, but rather it’s something that you have already until you disturb it.1:42I studied yoga for many years with a teacher named Swami Satchidananda and people would say, "What are you, a Hindu?" He’d say, "No, I’m an undo." And it’s really about identifying what’s causing us to disturb our innate health and happiness, and then to allow that natural healing to occur. To me, that’s the real natural wonder.2:00So, within that larger context, we can talk about diet, stress management -- which are really these spiritual practices -- moderate exercise, smoking cessation, support groups and community -- which I’ll talk more about -- and some vitamins and supplements. And it’s not a diet. You know, when most people think about the diet I recommend, they think it’s a really strict diet. For reversing disease, that’s what it takes, but if you’re just trying to be healthy, you have a spectrum of choices. And to the degree that you can move in a healthy direction, you’re going to live longer, you’re going to feel better, you’re going to lose weight, and so on. And in our studies, what we’ve been able to do is to use very expensive, high-tech, state-of-the-art measures to prove how powerful these very simple and low-tech and low-cost -- and in many ways, ancient -- interventions, can be.2:42We first began by looking at heart disease, and when I began doing this work 26 or 27 years ago, it was thought that once you have heart disease it can only get worse. And what we found was that, instead of getting worse and worse, in many cases it could get better and better, and much more quickly than people had once realized.

The importance of whole grain

Once upon a time it was very important for feeding to use freshly ground flour; indeed today none give importance to the quality of flour used for the bread we eat daily.

Modern life and modern mills broke the chain connecting miller and baker for centuries.

Ancient peoples used to - and primitive tribes still existing continue to do - produce daily their flour because it was the key for a healthy life and a perfect fitness.

We still admire the enterprises of roman armies and we know that they were technologically superior to the barbarians because they already knew how to build bridges, fortresses and catapults. But we don’t know that engineering wasn’t the only one secret of successful roman troops: they were also stronger than enemies because they were better fed, and this was possible thanks to whole cereals.

Every cohort – that is the unit of roman army – had got its portable millstone and used to mill daily some whole grain; the flour was distributed daily (750 grams per person per day) and eaten in form of soups or buns, and when the lack of cereals obliged them to eat meat, soldiers were considered malnourished.

We’ve completely forgotten what the fresh flour is: industrial flour is normally milled and refined weeks – or months - before using, so our bread is poor and completely dead.

The first problem is refining: many decades ago industry made us believe that white bread is better than brown one; the truth is that it’s easier to produce and the white flour is easier to preserve, because it doesn’t attract animals as the raw one: they naturally know that it isn’t a good food and they refuse it.

Any cereal is constituted by three parts: shell, body and germ. Shell and germ contain the most part of minerals (some essentials as copper, manganese, cobalt, zinc, chrome and selenium), vitamins and enzymes (expecially A, B, E, F and some essential oils).

Well, we normally waste all this precious parts and we use only the body of grain, that is mainly constituted by starch, that is the so-called “empty calories”.

Bread, pasta and other products made of white flour constitute about one third of our feeding, but they are now the poorest food ever seen in human history.

The second problem is oxidation: wheat grains and all other seeds are very resistant until they’re preserved by shell, but they’re easily degraded after milling. We know that oxygen damages all natural food: we can see it letting a piece of an apple in contact with air for a short time, and the same thing happens a little more slowly to bananas, milk, flour (and also to cooked food, as pizza or soup).

Cereals begin to die immediately after milling and loose completely their vital qualities in 8 days, but, as said before, we ignore the importance of eating fresh food, so we don’t care if the white flour have been normally milled (in modern, industrial mills) two or three weeks before to be used (in modern, industrial bakeries).

Quality of life is an important issue, and quality of food too. Beginning from the flour.

Local and good food

Buying and eating local food is often presented as the best choice a person can make. It may mean having to wait for winter to pass to eat fresh tomatoes, but it gives the idea that it is much more sustainable: no waste in long-distance transportations, fresher food at disposal and a concrete support for the local farmers.

Nevertheless, understanding real advantages of “eating local” requires a more complex and complete study on the food system as a whole. “Food miles/kilometres don't tell the whole story”.

It may appear obvious, but less kilometres not necessarily mean a smaller environmental impact. It depends on how food is transported (with which means), as much as it depends on how food is grown (in terms of safety and quality of the products used and also in terms of greenhouse gas emissions levels).

Moreover, food sustainability has a lot to do whit  food consume behaviors. Meat and dairy, for example, contribute a high percentage of the total food emissions. Some researches prove that  “replacing red meat and dairy with vegetables one day a week would be like driving 1,160 miles less”.

So, the distance between the producer and the consumer can be one of the indicators, and it is an important one. But there are many other things that need to be considerate.   

Therefore, we should perhaps move from the expression “local food” to the expression “good food”, embracing the definition given by one of the largest  philanthropic foundations in the United States. According to W.K. Kellogg Foundation, these are the qualities that  food need to have to be called “Good food”.

Healthy

Providing nourishment and

enabling all people to thrive;

Green

Produced in a manner that is

environmentally sustainable;

Fair

No one along the food chain

is exploited in its creation;

Affordable

All people have access to it.

Save your body!

Actual medical science is focused on illness, not on health, and the most investments are turned on diagnostic systems and new medicines, much longer than on prevention.

Technology is continuously in progress and today we can see microscopic lesions inside our organs; surgery is able to perform with precision and safety and many organs are now replaceable with a transplant.

We can heal from diseases we used to consider incurable until few years ago, we can overrun physical crises, we live longer; but the number of patient does not decrease.

Our society is affected by increasingly degenerative illnesses, which destructive impact can involve any organ, tissue or cell.

Nobody’s immune: who’s got perfect teeth, good sight, digestion, blood circulation, healthy and strong back and legs at the age of 50, often 40 and sometimes also 30 or less?

We can live a long, weak and drugged life: every year – often many times per year - we have to deal with influence, allergies and other respiratory illnesses; cancer is a threat for whom there’s no surgery or medicine able to delete the fear; and so on with heart attacks, diabetes, obesity, degeneration of nervous system.

A research in the 90’, but still valid, showed that at least 25% of young Americans wouldn’t be able to serve in the army, although qualities required to pass the exams for admission had been more times lowered; another worrying new is the increasing rate of infertile young couples in industrialized countries.

All this - and the list is widely incomplete – is strictly related to our lifestyle, according to the opinion of Caterine Kousmine, a famous nutritionist who published many researches about natural food. The reality is that nutrition is almost completely industrialized, and agriculture too; but the food industry doesn’t care about our health more than about his profit, and often medical science doesn’t care enough about food.

It seems an escapeless way for people living in industrialized countries: we are consumers before than humans and we have first to buy: food, medicines, diagnostic exams …

Caterine Kousmine – she begun decades ago - and many others suggest that we have to change quickly our mind and abandon the idea that our future depends on the development of new pharmaceutical products or medical machines; mankind will survive preventing illnesses, strengthening natural defences and the main way to do it is a proper diet. We are what we eat.

 

Food, water, shelter...these things are important

Let’s start from here:

“…wait, I need to have a more basic fundamental education about being human. Food, water, shelter...these things are important”. This is what Kally, an American girl of my age (30), thought a few years ago as she left her job as a kindergarten teacher and started working on farms (see the article linked below).

I must say that I actually agree whit her: those things are important. Although in our (western and rich) society we can’t help to take them for guaranteed, it seems that people are increasingly more attracted by rural life and food sources.

I, myself, am an example. Last summer the terrace of my flat wasn’t coloured by flours and traditional plants: its “guest” were strawberries, tomatoes, pumpkins , squashes… Despite the fact that only strawberries and tomatoes survived the insects and the illnesses (we aren’t experts at all!) , it was such a satisfaction! And so we went on planting pees, cabbage and carrots for the winter season… I’ll let you know how it goes!

There are many more serious experiences. An architect friend of mine last year got fed up whit short-terms jobs and decided to start a small farm activity in an unused piece of lend of her granddad. She has no farm background but she rolled up her sleeves and she has recently obtained some UE funds to develop her project.

This article is about young and educated Americans going “back to the farm”. I think it summarises well the different reasons that can explain this phenomenon.  Although US must have a very different agricultural system, I reckon that some young Europeans may think the same way of their Americans contemporaries.