Daily Archives: June 1, 2015

Education

Humble Pie à La Mode

AMERICA MAGAZINE
By Valerie Schultz

shutterstock_134052872_0When you go hiking up a mountain with your fit husband and fit daughter and find that, between the altitude and the steep grade, you can’t keep up with them, even though it’s a hike you’ve done before, you eat a little humble pie. Then, when your boot slips on some rocks on the way back down and you fall and bruise your tailbone, you eat a big slice of humble pie. You see by the solicitous looks on their faces that you have in fact aged while you were not paying attention, and maybe you should stick to activities more suited to your abilities. It’s a day for humble pie a la mode.

I must admit that I am surprised by physical limitations. I am used to feeling in control, at the top of my game, the super mom who can handle anything life proposes. Curtailing a hike due to waves of nausea and a pounding heart, and ending it clumsily on my butt, are not the kinds of events that jive with my self-image. And facing my shortcomings is not my idea of a pleasant morning.  More…

Development, Economic Justice, Environment

Some Food for Thought

AMERICA MAGAZINE
By Joseph McAuley
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The next time you are about to throw out that half-eaten container of fast-food take-out, consider these facts: about one-third of the world’s food production and consumption  systems either gets lost or wasted—that comes to about 1.3 billion tons, the value of which comes to the astronomical sum of $1 trillion. And this in a world where one in every nine people go hungry: an estimated 900 million people. The food that is lost or wasted by industrialized nations alone (some 300 million tons) more or less equals the total net food production of Sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tons). It is indeed alarming to think that, according to the United Nations’ Environment Program, of all the food that is produced, only one in four calories are actually eaten. And yet, with all the food that is available, people go hungry. Why is that?

The answers (if there are “answers”) are as many as the stars in the sky. And yet, more and more people are becoming aware of this glaring disparity between supply and need. An international effort is being undertaken to raise awareness of the humanitarian, environmental and financial implications of the effects of food waste. The “sustainability of the food system” is the aim of many international organizations—particularly the United Nations—in combating one of the major crises (if not the crisis) of our time. The European Union, in particular, is advancing the goal of having member states embracing the task of working toward eliminating food waste by 50  by the year 2025. It is an audacious target, given that the EU proposal is concerned not only with the retail and distribution end of food production, but of personal, consumer use as well and that, within the European Union, the amount of food wasted annually comes to about 100 million tons—a figure that will surely go higher as time goes on if the issue is not met. More…