Unless you've spent time on a farm, you may have little idea about where most of your food comes from. To be honest, many of us probably wouldn't want to see how the pepperoni on our pizza is made. But this is only just one fraction of the processes involved before we get to consume our food. Food systems don't just involve the growing and eating of food. From production through transportation and marketing, and then onto consumption and disposal, food systems involve a series of processes that exist in complicated interdependence.
The crises of famine and poverty are two of the most pressing problems facing the world today. On the opposite side of the spectrum, obesity is a leading preventable cause of death worldwide. It may be helpful to look at the production side of the food system to understand these challenges. The production of meat and animal products is extremely harmful to the environment. According to a 2006 United Nations study, the livestock industry is one of the largest contributors to environmental degradation worldwide.
The UN defines food security as a state where everyone has access to food sufficient for a healthy life. In the ancient past, great nations like Egypt and China predicted periods of frailty. They would stockpile food during times when the land yielded a surplus. This could then be distributed to the people during times of famine. The leaders of these nations forecasted the future and made tweaks to their food system. They ensured food availability during both bountiful and bare times. Availability is one of the pillars of food security, according to the World Health Organization. It includes the production and exchange of food. Nations that have limited natural resources to food can still ensure food availability through trade.
Sometimes the availability of food isn't the main challenge to health. Access is the second pillar of food security, and it includes how affordable food is to the population. The third pillar involves how food is used by people. Food that is consumed should be easily digested by people. Transparency is an important aspect of food systems. This ensures that the food we end up consuming meets the pillars of food security. Nutritional labels are an example of how food producers are transparent about their products.
The Global Alliance for the Future of Food is a consortium of philanthropic organizations. The Global Alliance is a proponent of revitalizing food systems. For example, paddy fields require arable land, lots of water, and immense labour to maintain. Genetically modifying crops is one way to reduce its frailty to pests, and increase its yield.
How about meat? On August 5, 2013, Richard McGeown cooked up a burger that cost almost $350,000 USD! What was the big deal about a simple burger? Well, this particular burger happened to feature the world’s first lab-grown meat. Professor Mark Post and a team of scientists from the Netherlands took stem cells from a cow. They used the stem cells to make the world’s first artificial meat replacement.
If meat grown in a lab is not something you’re interested in, would you consider cutting meat from your diet completely? In May 2009, the city of Ghent, Belgium, became the first city in the world to go vegetarian once a week. For environmental reasons, local authorities decided to introduce weekly ‘meatless days’. Civil servants took part in the weekly meatless days, eating vegetarian meals one day per week. The city put up posters to encourage locals to take part in the vegetarian days. They even printed ‘veggie street maps’ to highlight restaurants serving vegetarian food. In September 2009, schools in Ghent introduced weekly vegetarian days in their school lunch programs. Imagine if every city in the world ran a similar program. What an easy way to reduce the damage of the meat industry by one-seventh!
How else can we change our practices to shape a better future for everyone?