Zero Hunger

By Mollie Semple

I live with extreme privilege when it comes to food. Whenever I feel even the slightest

pangs of hunger I have access to nourishing, tasty, beautiful food of every type of variety.

Some might say, including myself, that I have excess access to food. There is too much

food for me. When so many others go hungry I can waste, I can overeat, I can indulge. I

am not pertaining to have feelings of guilt surrounding my access to food because as an

individual I am not entirely in control of the circumstances I grew up in. But, what I can do

is understand my privilege and use it to take steps towards eradicating the disparity of

hunger in the world.

According to the United Nations “hunger” is the term used to define periods when

populations are experiencing severe food insecurity meaning that they go for entire days

without eating due to lack of money, lack of access to food, or other resources. 1 In this

sense I have never experienced hunger. But even within the UK, a country with an

abundance of food there are children and adults who go hungry. Around the world about

820 million people - 11% of the global population - are malnourished despite the fact that

there is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone.

It kind of goes without saying that food is vital to a person’s wellbeing but when you are

always able to access food you might forget what a difference it makes to your daily life.

Even within my incredibly comfortable life I am affected if I don’t eat properly or if I get

hungry. It makes me lose concentration, I get irritable, I get tired. Imagine that exacerbated

to the point where one is malnourished, or literally starving, or going days feeling hungry -

the quality of one’s life is seriously depleted.

In 2019 it was estimated that 21,000 people die every day from undernutrition. 3 To me that

is inconceivable. A few years ago in the UK there was a television documentary about

supermarkets that threw away perfectly decent fruit and vegetables because they didn’t

look quite right. 4 By this I mean they were a bit wonky. That is literally it. 21,000 people die

every day from undernutrition and we waste food because it is not aesthetically pleasing.

Let us put that into an even more locally focussed perspective. In the UK food industry 1.9

million tonnes of food is wasted every year and 250,000 tonnes of that is still edible which

is enough for 650 million meals. Despite this 8.4 million people in the UK struggle to afford

to eat, 4.7 million of which live in severely food insecure homes. 5 How do we let that

happen? How do we let children down like that? How, in a country where we have all the

means available to distribute excess food to the needy, do we let it go to waste and let

people go hungry?

I mention the UK because I think of it as a microcosmic example of the deplorable attitude

that the wealthy and privileged have towards food and hunger worldwide. No person

should go hungry. In most cultures we are taught as children to share and be fair to others

who might not have what we have, why do we forget that as adults?

Going hungry puts one at a significant disadvantage and it bleeds into so many other

aspects of life. For example, children who go hungry are less likely to succeed at school

and do well in their education because it is so hard to concentrate and focus on an empty

stomach. And, these children who struggle at school might become adults who cannot

afford food, thus repeating a vicious cycle. It is up to those who have access to food, who

are privileged and advantaged because of food, to put an end to this cycle.

I don’t want this to be an entirely negative post, although it does discuss some rather

upsetting statistics, because there are already movements, people and campaigns that are

working to eradicate this unnecessary global hunger. For example, using the UK again

here, there are things called food banks which distribute free food to those who cannot

afford to buy it. 6 It works on donations from those who can afford to shop for food and then

the people in need can come and collect items for their family. Food bank collections are

often in supermarkets stating the items that are needed so that whilst you are doing your

own shop you can pick up a few items to put in the food bank basket at the end.

There are numerous ways to eradicate hunger, not least because we have more than

enough food to go around so hunger simply should not be a problem. But the fact is,

hunger is an enormous problem. It is therefore the responsibility of those who can to work

towards “zero hunger” worldwide. Once we do that we can even start to eliminate other

global disadvantages as well.

Sources:

State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World 2018 online summary,

http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition/en/

Action Against Hunger International Nutrition Security Policy, page 8

https://editorials.voa.gov/a/world-hunger-day-2019/4935420.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/programmes/b06nzl5q/episodes

https://fareshare.org.uk/what-we-do/hunger-food-waste/