Food for thought… or how Europe’s gastronomic greed eats the world

«  I don’t want to read what you had for breakfast yesterday», that’s what one of the panelists mentioned about blogging at the Th!nk About it launch event. But why wouldn’t my two slices of multigrain bread, my apple and hot soy chocolate be related to European Politics?

Food plays  –at least three times a day- a crucial role in our day. And oh, how do we, Europeans, like our food? We devour it with great delight, give Michelin stars to posh restaurants, enjoy exploring the limits of the edible (frogs, kangaroos, ostrich,… name it and you find It in a European supermarket) and above all we praise ourselves to be culinary connoisseurs, which makes our ‘European’ kitchen of diversity obviously superior to, for example, the North-American fast food culture. As a comment on my last blogsomeone even mentioned food (in that case ‘meat’ and the free choice consume anything and as much as you want) could be called a ‘European value’.  I agree it must be a great illusion to consider yourself being born in the all-you-can-eat restaurant, called Europe. Still, our greed is not without consequences. We eat too much than good for us or for the rest of the world.

 Why not take a sample of the European Population by asking the 785 MEP’s at the next European Parliament meeting what they had for food yesterday? Chances are their average calorie intake would be around the European average: 3700 calories/day. 1500 calories more than recommended by the United Nations.

 It’s not new to hear our Western eating habits damage our health. As the image above shows every year 2.5 million die from heart disease and illnesses associated with obesity, while at the same time every day 40 000 children die from malnutrition and diseases. No wonder, because the average calorie intake in low income countries is barely 1900 calories per day or even less.

The reaction governmental campaigns concerning ‘healthy food’ often get, are offensive ones . “Who’s a government in playing ‘the restrictive father’ about the choices of their citizens?” I partly agree, if our personal health was the only consequence of our European diet, why should a government mind? Just like for smoking or alcohol use, a lot of people will defend their bad eating habits by mentioning the value of free choice or in other words the “I decide for myself how I die”-response. But, what we eat go beyond our swelling stomachs. Do we have the right to say without shame red on our cheeks “I decide for myself how others die, even if it is from hunger”?

Last Tuesday, the Dutch Humanitarian Organisation ‘Wereld Delen’, IFMSA and Move Your World astonished me with some food-facts at their first MDG Masterclass.  I knew the Millennium Development Goals before. In 2000,  147 countries signed the MDG-declaration with eight concrete humanitarian goals for the world.  By confirming this, they promised to carry out all they can to achieve the goals by 2015. It was not new for me either that the first goal strives to reduce the world poverty by 50 percent and decrease hunger. But what I didn’t know was how frustrating the circumstances still are, just 6 years before the agreed ‘deadline’. (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/)

At this moment, the world food production would be enough to feed every single individual on earth! This sounds like great news! The so called ‘World Meal’, the amount of food every world citizen could eat every day if the world production would be divided equally would look like this:

This meal would provide enough calories and nutritional values for an adult person for a day. During the MDG Masterclass in Maastricht last Tuesday all participants were served a world meal for dinner, consisting of lentil-potato soup, quinoa with tomato sauce, a carrot ‘burger’, fresh salad, beans and yoghurt with apple as a dessert.  Delicious! I asked some people around me how they liked it. The answers came with smiling faces: ” I never thought a ‘world meal’ could be so tasty and satisfying’, “ It’s more than enough food. I would wish everybody could have this meal every day”.

But why didn’t we manage to distribute our food equally so far? A lecturer explained the main reasons after meal-time. In his observation, you could speak of three main problems: waste of food, corrupt politicians and meat-production.

On a yearly basis, every European citizen throws away 55 kilograms of food, 10-15 percent of the food we bought. Especially bread and dairy products are left in the trash bin once they are over expiry date.  Only in the Netherlands, that counts up to 2 billion euro’s a year!

How come farmers in a lot of third world countries produce so much food products for export, while people in their country are dying of hunger?  The guilt is often in the hands of politicians and economic money hunters. Why feed the poor if they can make more money by exporting their products? Why would they spend money to humanitarian action if they could invest in weapons instead?

And then there is meat. As you see the world meal doesn’t include meat nor fish. In contemporary Europe, citizens are eating three times more meat than recommended by the World Health Organization. This doesn’t only damages their own health, but also weighs heavy on the planet and on the poverty problem. Not even mentioning the quality and production circumstances of this industrially produced, processed and transported food.  Fish is also not mentioned in the World Meal.

·        This, because on one side there is the problem of ‘overfishing’, which means the amount of fish per hectare decreases dramatically. (According to WWF, more than 70 percent of the fish species over overfished. One third of the world wide fish populations shrank to 1/10 of what it once was! )

·        On the other side, because an growing fraction of fish originates from the ‘aqua culture’, kind of an intensive fish industry. For this form of intensive fish industry a lot of fish food is needed: for one kilogram of salmon you need 5 (!) kilos of fish flour (FOA Food Balance sheets 2003).

 For meat the situation is even worse. Worldwide more than 35 percent of the cultivated grain is fed to cattle. As the meat consumption is rising now, the FAO expects that meat production will double by 2050: from 223 billion to 450 billion a year. That would account for 2/3 of the world grain, fed to livestock. Many of this produced meat and milk will be exported abroad (mostly as ‘milk powder’). Europe subsidizes this. Every year 42 billion Euro’s  go to Western agriculture. Because of Europe’s generosity, export is not so expensive as you would think it would be. Is that a good thing? Maybe it is for our happy Europe, but for eg. African farmers, it means a true nightmare. How can they sell their own products for fair prizes if Europe provides cheaper alternatives? And how do we deal with the fact rainforests are daily cut down for the cultivation of soy, mostly to reach us indirectly through the animals we eat?

Some quick facts:

·        50 % of the grains, 99% of root crops, 90% of legumes and 48% of the fish produced in the world… goes to livestock food, while we could consume it directly and save some food for other people in need!

·        To produce one hamburger, you need 1550 liters of valuable water, while one slice of bread would ‘only’ cost 40 liters of water.

So why not give it a try and use our own fork as a tool to ‘be the change’? Even by the little effort of choosing a vegetarian ‘world meal’ once a week, we can play a part in a more sustainable, fair world… for all of us!

By the way, it doesn’t even need to be an un-gastronomic effort. In contrary, if the Th!nk About It panelist  likes to read it or not, I’m glad to describe in full flavor the falafel with fresh local veggies and Belgian potatoes I enjoyed for dinner today. Yummy J and still with a trace of European culinary kitchen magic!

Latest posts by Veerle VRINDTS

• The after feeling... or how I didn't go to vote this year
• European Youth and Mobility... or busy MEP's on vote mission.
• Bart Staes... or how I interviewed my first MEP
• Europe in 1468 grams... or how Geert Mak convinced me to take up the heaviest literary challenge of my life.
• Fur no more…or how the EU promises to save the lives of seals

Rate this article

(106 votes, average: 4.74 out of 5)

 Loading ...