World Food Day

When I don’t eat by noon, I complain and get cranky. It’s a valid complaint; it is important to eat breakfast—which I seldom do, even though I have the means to do so and am quite lucky for that—and to teach children that it’s the most important meal of the day. But such crabbiness due to lack of food is nothing compared to what many people of the world have to face.

Over a billion people in the world are undernourished right now; that means that a sixth of our world is dying of starvation. Over 8 million people have already died of hunger this year—over 12,000 today alone—and a child dies of hunger every 5 seconds.

This year’s World Food Day theme is “Achieving Food Security in Times of Crisis.” Indeed, it’s a fitting theme. Water shortages and wildfires are rampant not just in areas of the U.S. but in the world at large. Economic problems have lead people to become hungry. While there is enough food to go around, there isn’t yet enough distribution or division of power to get it to those who need it.

And while over 12,000 tons of food has been given in aid today alone, almost 60,000 tons of food has gone to waste today in just America! These numbers are grossly unbalanced, and we have the power to balance the scales and provide food for where it is most desperately needed. (To see real time statistics, click here.)

It’s amazing that 70% of these people live in rural communities—often agriculturally-based—and could be saved so easily with just a few more resources, a few crop safeguards.

To help locally, you can donate money or foodstuffs to your local food bank, food pantry, or relief organization.

To help globally, you can donate money to the Telefood Projects, a program that gives poor families tools to increase their own food production and variety. All of the money is spent on the families—no money is given to administration or other costs.

We can also make time in our lives every day to reflect on how fortunate we are, and think about those who are much less fortunate than us. We can make an effort to not waste food—to only buy what we need, and to share the importance of food and its meaning to our children and families.