We demonstrated the magnitude of our broken food model by detailing the loss of some 50 percent of the banana crop in India, impoverishing nearly 35,000 smallholder farmers in that country. We described the 1.7 million deaths that occur annually due to low consumption of fruits and vegetables--foods that suffer particular loss because of their perishability. We interviewed professionals who had battled international hunger through the World Food Programme, and those fighting domestic food insecurity at the Houston Food Bank. We described the impact of micronutrient deficiencies on some two billion people, many of them children faced with anemia, blindness, stunting, and wasting. And we discussed the impact of a twenty-first century mega-trend, urbanization, which is rapidly creating a global middle class that is just as rapidly becoming removed and detached from its sources of food.
We find different ways to lose and waste food around the world, but we're all consistent in destroying a third of everything intended for our stomachs. |
More than two years after publishing Food Foolish, as we close out 2017, it's a good time to take stock. How are we doing? What progress have we made against climate change, hunger, and food waste? And what's next?
Here's a brief report card, with two caveats: All opinions are mine. And, in Food Foolish University, there is no such thing as grade inflation.