Food for thought

Around three million Filipino families went hungry in the first quarter of 2015, a survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) revealed. Yet, according to the World Food Program of the United Nations, there is enough food in the world for everyone.

The problem, according to the UN agency, is that poverty deprives many people of access to readily available food. This is against the global backdrop of over 1.3 billion tons of food being lost each year to wastage.

Latest data from the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PRRI) show that each Filipino wastes an average of 3.29 kilos of rice each year or a total of 296,869 metric tons of the staple grain going down the drain.

A study has yet to be undertaken on the tonnage of food wasted from commercial establishments but it is common knowledge that restaurants all over the country throw away unsold food at the end of each day – food that can sustain the multitude of hungry Filipinos.

Maybe it’s time that Filipinos look at the Greek model of feeding the poor while fighting wastage – a movement started three years ago by the Bourome or We Can organization.

Bourome takes unsold food from shops and restaurants that are perfectly fit for consumption but are nonetheless headed for the garbage dump, and uses them to feed the growing number of Greeks growing hungry because of their country’s worsening economic crisis.

According to the Agence France Presse, the food collected by Bourome provides about 2,500 meals a day across Greece. Fancy something like this happening in the Philippines.-End-

Image by: The Examiner