Ending World Hunger

Impact of food choices on world hunger

As you are probably aware, many health experts are concerned about the short- and long-term impacts of fluctuating food prices and inconsistent food supplies. In the period immediately following food price hikes, poor families who are already struggling to feed themselves begin to decrease spending on health. Bill and I are so passionate about sharing what we know with many good people like yourself who may be unaware that dietary changes could help end world hunger. Knowing there is a solution is what we all need to focus on, and I wanted to ask if you would be willing to help me spread the word. Nations ending hunger will require tough choices in the field and on the dinner table, but it can be done. Collaboration is at the centre of everything, and so the future depends on the sustainable work we do today, you, me, our family, friends and colleagues. Are you encouraged and excited to be part of this work? Being a healthy vegan and sharing our vision is a great joy.

Impact of food choices on human health

Each of us have to consider that what we put on our plates at breakfast, lunch and dinner can contribute to world hunger. For our fellow man, hunger and malnutrition makes the body weak and vulnerable to diseases and infections as the body does not have the fuel to build muscle and fight off infections. In children, this is deadly, and many children die in hunger prone areas for this reason. Research also shows an association between food insecurity and delayed development in young children; risk of chronic illnesses like asthma and anaemia; and behavioural problems like hyperactivity, anxiety and aggression in school-age children.

Ending world hunger

Implementing these three words ‘ending world hunger’ would feed nearly one billion people who go to bed hungry day after day. At the other end of the scale, we have nearly one billion people eating themselves to death. There is still such a lack of awareness around the world about how our food choices affect others, so, I wanted to share with you some ideas that can help feed everyone on this planet. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing?  Sustainable and healthy diets will require cooperation on a global scale not simply from a few countries, but from all countries.

We must all move towards a plant-based vegan diet, and as a result, we will use less water to produce the food. In addition to consuming a lot of water to produce meat, livestock farming also pollutes our water source because of the waste produced by the livestock ends up in waterways. And for yourself, you will feel more energized, healthier and have better health as you age than you could ever imagine simply by removing the animal-based foods. You have nothing to lose but everything to gain.

Other key changes needed are cutting food waste and combating poor nutrition. If we see that there is more than enough food for everyone, that ending hunger would be easy, that it would be joyful, that it would allow hundreds of millions of people to become productive healthy humans with us, that the lives of all of us would be enhanced immeasurably if 25,000-35,000 people per day were not dying of hunger, so I am hugely encouraged that there is much that can be implemented, are you? Here are just a few things that we need to be thinking about.

Climate smart agriculture, responding to forced migration, reducing food waste, disaster risk reduction, controlling infestations and crop infections and of course the number one solution is to stop feeding the food grown to animals, with about 75% of global agricultural land being used for animal agriculture, much of which is attributed to crops grown for animal feed. It may seem like an impossible task to end world hunger but it’s not, it is 100% achievable.

Food is already plentiful

The world already produces enough food for everyone, but around one third of it is discarded or spoils in transport or storage before reaching consumers. It is possible to end world hunger and we all must unite to make this happen. All of us can and should be able to provide foods for our families every day. I hope you are excited by the prospect of being involved in creating a world where food hunger is a thing of the past. Please join me in encouraging, instructing, mentoring, teaching, influencing, guiding and inspiring, many others to assist in ending world hunger.

There are so many fantastic projects with so many wonderful people doing great work to end world hunger, I am so blessed to be part of this work. Education is the most important tool we all have to change the world. United we stand, divided we fall as the saying goes, so back in 2010 I launched an online programme called Weight Loss Nature's Way. 20% of sales went to Action Against Hunger UK which meant that those who were overfed were then contributing to those who were underfed, and it did bring about awareness that when we connect the dots, we realise that we are one. No matter how small we think we are, we can all bring about change. Our actions count, our words count, what we have at the end of our fork’s everyday counts. Global food literacy programmes are one of the most important incentives that bring about change to millions.

What to do?

So, what is the solution you might ask? How can we avoid supporting industrial agriculture? As consumers, we can choose not to eat the Standard American Diet (SAD) or in fact, now the world diet which is inundated with animal products that largely come from industrialised factory farms. By choosing a whole food plant-based vegan diet, you can do your part in not supporting a major part of the industrialised agriculture system. We should all do our best to embrace whole, sustainable food.

To quote Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh: “Every day, 40,000 children die in the world for lack of food. We, who overeat in the West, who are feeding grains to animals to make meat, are eating the flesh of these children.” As mentioned above, industrial agriculture is also the main driving force behind water scarcity/pollution, species extinction, deforestation, poor health outcomes, the death and never-ending suffering of our animal kingdom and climate change.

We each have two hands, one for helping ourselves and one for helping others. That's my philosophy that I love and live daily, to see the end of world hunger with a vegan world at the core would make my heart sing. We both feel very privileged to do this work every day.

In good health