Sanjay Puri
According to Indian philosophy food is equal to God. But are we giving the same amount of respect to food these days? Frankly, most of us do not. We fail to remember that millions of poor people are dying in hunger when millions of tons of food is being thrown away and wasted for no good reason. Every time food inflation comes as a topic for discussion, formal or informal, it almost always goes in the same direction. People start beating up government for carelessness and corruption. Why don’t we reflect on our own lifestyle and understand how our own choices are causing, or enabling the problem to happen?
Food wastage in Indian weddings is an eye opener. Extra food has to be prepared to make sure everyone is well fed in spite of its expected wastage. Perhaps one of life’s greatest injustices is when one person sleeps on a full stomach while another scours desperately for food a few feet away. While this is a direct consequence of the inequality that exists between people throughout the world, the situation is made a lot worse by the huge amounts of food that goes to waste each day due to improper management and disposal of leftovers. The issue of food wastage is of high importance to fight hunger, raise income and improve food security in India. Wasting food is not good for anyone in anyway. It is harmful to the economy, it is harmful to the environment and also it is against our own ethical justification.
Each time food goes unconsumed, all the resources that went into producing processing, packing and transporting the food are wasted. This means that a huge amount of water, money and other materials are depleted. Food wastage increases methane emission and contributes significantly to climatic change.
Food wastage is morally wrong because there are many people who are hungry or dying, simply because they have no food. Accordingly to the UN’s World Food Organisation around 920 million people are going hungry worldwide of which one third are children.
Go to the restaurant and look at the amount of food that remains uneaten when the wait staff removes the plates. The waste is especially grievous in the resorts, national parks, riversides and other public places; I see a huge amount of uneaten food. Supermarkets, bakeries and other stores that sell food, lose out on tons of items that go into dumpsters every day.
According to an estimate 30 to 40 per cent food prepared at different events in India, especially at weddings is wasted when people rush towards the food and fill up their plates with more food that they can consume. Both the host and guests are responsible for the wastage of food. People take much food in the first attempt and then unable to eat that due to which the food goes to waste. On the other hand there is tradition in Indian wedding that a good host feeds his guests well. In weddings the food wastage is an eye opener because extra food has to be prepared to make sure everyone is well fed in spite of its expected wastage.
In addition the trend of buffet in different events, and weddings leads to more food wastage. People love to taste everything and in that process leave most of the dishes wasted because either they do not like it or want something else that catches their attention. People take maximum food in their first round without seeing what will be left for the person behind them in the queue.
The evil of wasting food has even crept into our homes these days. The food that goes into the waste basket after every meal from a home is enough to feed a least one hungry person. Even a single grain of food is too precious to waste. The food is prepared or ordered accordingly to the number of guests invited. Meanwhile normally the guests do not inform their host if they cannot attend the function, and hence the food that is prepared is wasted.
We live in a country where lacks of people, unfortunately, hardly manage one meal a day and sleep with an empty stomach apart from those millions who are under nourished. We should think at least once before wasting the food and look at those waiters who serve the food at weddings and restaurants. If one gets a chance to visit kitchens of restaurants, then one would be shocked to see the amount of food going to dustbins.
Government should also act responsibly. India is a significant contributor on account of both pre and post harvest waste in cereals, pulses, fruits and vegetables. Though we produce enough food, we are not able to feed all because we do not manage our food produce or distribution system well. There are several reasons why so much perishable food is lost, including the absence of modern food distribution chains, too few cold-storage centers and refrigerated trucks, poor transportation facilities, erratic electricity supply, and the lack of incentives to invest in the sector. A study done by the Institute of Mechanical Researchers revealed that the quantity of wheat wasted by the poor storage is equal to the entire production of wheat of Australia.
Gandhiji once told that if God were to appear to the millions of hungry people, it would be in the form of food. So, please don’t waste food. If things are going wrong, we have to put them on the right track. So let us start a silent revolution from our homes to stop wastage of food. Also let us resolve to teach others about the crime of wasting food during parties and celebrations. Encourage NGOs to pick up leftover food through refrigerated vehicles for free distribution among the destitute people. Not only is it a wonderful way of helping many poor and hungry people but was also a way by which one could prevent food from being wasted.
(The author is senior journalist. Feedback welcome at [email protected])
