[sadhuji]

Food is what we all live for. When we talk of two square meals a day, we remind ourselves that to maintain a healthy countenance, one must have his daily dose of vitamins, calories, proteins etcetera, otherwise he might succumb to one of the irritating diseases. However, there are a whole lot of humans who have to subsist on whatever comes their way; they have no choice but to live off the thrown away foodstuff from eating houses. I have seen with my own eyes roadside people who have retrieved chapatis from the dust bins adjacent to hotels and restaurants and are drying them in the next day’s morning sun. These are kept for individual consumption and the extra stuff is sold to other needy humans.

Food is a subject that is exploited to the hilt by governments and agencies who love to trade in on the sufferings of the poor. Lack of food means undernourishment and skinny undernourished pot bellied kids make for great photographs that wring the tears from your eyes. Programs called ‘food for all’ are exercises in trying to extract that extra dose of sympathy from you for the betterment of the under privileged – an activity that has noble intentions but seldom takes off. These begin with a lot of fanfare and are finally are consigned to the history books.

Under the circumstances, World Food Day has little or no meaning in a country like ours where hunger and poverty are seen everywhere but which we would rather not talk about.  For us the Sensex hovering at the 19 K mark and rolling out the red carpet for our billionaires are more important.

[dzibead]

For a fascinating look at food around the world - who eats what and how much - I highly recommend a book called "Hungry Planet, What the World Eats" by Peter Manzel and Faith D'Aluision.  The text and the photos are outstanding  ... and will make you stop and think.  

It's a companion book to "Material World, A Global Family Portrait" by Peter Menzel, which has pictures of 16 families from around the world, who are statistically average for their respective countries,  outside their homes, surrounded by all their possessions.  Mind boggling.