Food for Good: A Challenge to Transform Lives
Re-imagining one of the most consequential human experiences
“Food is our common ground, a universal experience.”
- James Beard
Breaking bread together is not just about eating with people; it is an expression used to show how food co-relates with an emotional experience. Be it a quintessential gathering of friends on a Sunday or a grand celebration of festivities; everything is incomplete without the ubiquitous imperative called food. Food is a powerful component of our lives; it helps us create memories, gives us an identity, and binds families and friends together. Over the years, food has become more than sustenance. It has come to become an experience deeply instilled in our daily lives. Eating wholesome food nourishes our bodies and minds, which further brings a sense of joy.
Quoting Chef Pablo Naranjo Agular
“Food is a multi-sensory experience. It is Powerful”
This is also one of the reasons why food gives us happiness which remains long after we have finished the meal. Food is, doubtlessly, a universal experience of happiness.
The meals we eat, not only fuel our bodies or the mind, but they also play a significant role in shaping our identities and our communities. Food is a rudimentary element of one’s culture; the customs, restrictions, and celebration and has been molded by our beliefs, our history, our traditional values, and most importantly, our resources.
Food and society are intertwined in more ways than we can imagine. “What we eat is what we are”-this isn’t just a fact to ornate the concept of healthy food. It is also true in the social sense. Each one of us has grown up eating the food of our cultures; it has become our identity. We associate foods from our childhood with warm feelings and call it soul food or our comfort food.
Regardless of the different stations in life, we all know that a celebration calls for a special meal. Our festivals like Eid, Christmas, and Diwali are incomplete without the family sitting around the table to devour the traditional delicacies. Upholding this tradition of cooking the cultural recipes for family meals becomes a symbol of pride for many groups. Traditional recipes are passed down from one generation to another, which helps in tracing back the roots. People immigrating bring their food with themselves wherever they go, to preserve their cultural identities. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, food has become a gateway to our cultures and society.
Now that we have established the significance of food in our lives, let us understand what is wrong.
What’s Wrong with our food?
Over the past decades, global food systems have broken down. Once upon a time, the same food systems had helped to nourish a fast-growing population. However, the cost of that is being bored by the current generation. The existing food systems have become machines of extraction and have started to contradict their purpose of serving for the population’s health and well being. Most of us who are not involved in the process of “the farm to the table” don’t think much about it. But our well being and the well being of the environment is at stake, and hence, we need to question, and we need to question right now.
Some problems:
- Supermarkets are being stacked and shelved with addictive and cheap food products with misleading labels on them. High on sugar and salt the food on the aisles of the grocery stores is leading millions of children to become obese and suffer from diabetes and the earliest signs of hypertension and heart disease.
- Extensive use of pesticides and fertilizers in crops is required in commercial farming. A report says that globally 5 million deaths a year by 2050 can happen due to the excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers in crops and antibiotics in livestock farming.
- The problem of unidentified origins of the food on the table is another threat to the consumer’s health. A company may mislabel its products as organic while they have used only a few organic ingredients in the production.
- The food system is trapping the consumer through food aesthetics. People are drawn towards what is on their plates, and the food giants are luring the customer by heavily concentrating on this aspect.
- The food we are consuming has had an enormous impact on the environment. The use of machinery in the production and processing of food, the unsustainable methods of farming, the exploitation of animal resources are a few instances where the food industry contributes to climate change.
- The gap is increasing. From children facing trouble with obesity to a large part of the population still sleeping hungry, the inequality has sustained.
The companies in the global food system have started to maximize their revenues at the cost of the health of their customers. Unsustainable modes of farming, poor governance of policies and the ingredients being sourced in an unhealthy way are the few major issues, but still, they are just the tip of the iceberg. Companies are making millions from this, and the consumers are not thinking twice. The food giants are thriving on the impulse of the buyers. It is high time that we start raising questions about the food we have on our plates.
We need to rethink the importance of food in our daily lives; we need to rethink about the emotions that exist around food and re-experience the joy of consuming wholesome foods. And then, try and innovate such that the big food giants stop capitalizing on the most substantial experience of human lives.
Now, let’s understand what is being done and what can be done?
The global food system can be defined as the “production, processing, packaging and supplying of food throughout the world.” Through the use of science and technology new ways of producing, processing, packaging food, are being developed to make the food we consume safer and healthier. Innovation in food is imperative since it is playing a role in defining how we can move towards a sustainable yet plentiful food supply to feed the population.
Governments are trying to regulate the malpractices seen in the food industry. The food giants are improving their practices. Seeing the changes in the world, many companies have started to launch more healthful products in environmental-safe packaging. Farmers, with the help of scientists, are trying the sustainable and scientific ways of farming to increase their yields. People’s diets are changing; there is a massive surge towards veganism, which is serving people with nourishment and helping them prevent diseases.
One billion; that is the number of people in the world being threatened by starvation. We need to produce more and producing for all doesn’t mean that we forget that what we eat and how we eat gets instilled deep in our hearts. The food experience is something above fine dining; it is that very thing that links us all together. We need a change, and we need it now. The road towards re-imagining the roots of the human experience, i.e. food has to be paved by the new-age entrepreneurs, inventors, innovators and organizations.
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
Here’s to leading ourselves to change!
