Wednesday 16 October 2013

World Food Day

I'm not gonna lie. I was at a little bit of a loss today about what I was going to blog about. I have some ideas in the pipeline for future blog but none of them were ones that I wanted to write at this stage of October and so I needed an idea. I always go to my trusty Google whenever I need an idea and I thought: "I wonder if there is any National Day that will be cool and interesting." 

What I found was that today, 16th October, is actually World Food Day. It is celebrated to commemorate the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) in 1945 after they realised how much of a problem the food situation in the world is.
Now, for all of your that live in a Western society, it begs us to ask the question why this is such a big deal but that's because we have enough food to feed millions of people many times over. It's not a big deal for us and it's because that we don't really think about other countries on a daily basis that we don't realise how this could be a big deal for others. Or you all do and I don't, which makes me an incredibly selfish person. BUT I'm pretty sure you're all like me and forget the rest of the world when we're having a stressful or long day!

Anyway, if we look at the biggest picture, there is around enough food produced for everyone yearly. It is a fact that if we were to share all the food produced around fairly, there would be enough. But yet, we have around 800 million people who go to bed hungry, and even more shockingly: every 5 seconds a child dies of hunger or malnutrition... How does that work out?
In fact, that works out because life isn't fair. The food isn't shared around fair and the most affluent countries get the majority of the share whilst those most deprived, and arguably those that most need it, suffer with poverty and malnutrition. It is a huge problem and one that has been a major issue for many many years but yet we are still unable to fix it.

We are still unable to share food around in a respectable manner and that makes us animals. We leave other people to die and most of the time, we do this without a second thought.Not only do we let others go without food but ignorantly, we waste more food than anyone could imagine.

When I think about it, it really does make me feel sick. We are humans, we surely should have got past this whole "we have the most money, we get all the food" mentality to help others. It makes me wonder if we'll ever eradicate the majority of malnutrition and poverty?
Think about it all today and from those thoughts, try to be more conscientious. Don't just half-heartedly throw things away or buy more than you need. And if you are in a position where you can, please try to help in anyway you can.

We're one nation, it's about time we started acting like one!

xxx

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