Category Archives: Hunger

Hunger, Real Food

Expiration Dates and Food Waste

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Being a small business that has produced food I am full aware of how expiration dates work.  In my experience everything in the following video is accurate.

I am aware of and I have written on the topics of food quality and hunger.  One of the other things that Adam touches on in the video is food waste.  According to the USDA food waste in the United States “is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply”.  In 2010 this amounted to “approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food”.

This is perfectly good food that could feed the poor, hungry, and homeless.  A high percentage of this is food is never seen by the public but instead goes directly into landfills.  This makes added loss of land, water, labor, energy, and other resources diverting this food to dumps according to the EPA.  This could be beneficial to society but instead contributes to pollution.

The USDA reports on “How much food waste is there in the United States and why does it matter”

The EPA’s report on food waste being the largest component of municipal landfills

Further reading in an article by TheAtlantic.com

Film, Hunger

Food Stamped (2010)

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Did you see my post about A Place At The Table?  Did you watch the film?  Watch it, and then immediately watch Food Stamped.

If you’ve followed along, the issues of quality food and hunger are close to my heart – and it is my hope that this is a topic is one that other people look at.

In “Food Stamped” Shira & Yoav Potash take ‘The Food Stamp Challenge’ (which seems to match the name of what a number of folks on Capitol Hill experimented with).  For one week they shop & eat on the average amount of money that someone receiving food stamps has to use – which is about $1 per meal for an individual.  They took this further by making a few ground rules that the food must be nutritious:

  • Every meal must include protein, whole grains & fruits/veggies
  • To buy as many organic items as they could afford
  • To eat as little processed foods as possible
  • At the end of the week submit their diet record to a registered dietitian for a nutritional evaluation

Through their film they interview food justice activists, nutrition experts, politicians, and ordinary people living on food stamps – all to look closely at the challenges that low-income Americans face daily trying to put three-square meals on the table.

Shira is a certified nutrition educator with a Masters of Science in Community Health Education.  She teaches nutrition-based cooking classes to elementary school students in low-income neighborhoods, most of who are from families that qualify for food stamps.

Yoav is a graduate of UC Berkeley and has taught film courses at the Bay Area Video Coalition and Academy of Art University.  He is a documentary film maker who has produced documentaries & videos for many companies and nonprofits.

FoodStamped.com

FoodStamped.com the film

Food Stamped Film Trailer

Food Stamped at IMDB

Film, Hunger, Review

A Place At The Table

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This film was produced by the same folks who made Food, Inc.  It points out and questions the following:

  • The U.S. is one of the wealthiest countries in the world – we also produce more food than we consume.
  • How is it and why is it that the U.S. has a substantial number of people who cannot afford to buy food and are starving &/or cannot afford to purchase quality sustenance?

Apparently we had this problem in the 1970s, and we beat it.  Now it’s back, and it’s not a simple issue, but an extremely important one.  One of the things that I wanted to do with WIBC while a production food company was to join this fight.  When I finished watching this film I started writing a letter to Jeff Bridges (the actor), but I was so fired up that I couldn’t tie my many thoughts and sentences together.  Why Jeff Bridges?  Watch the film.

A Place At The Table at IMDB

TakePart.com – A Place At The Table

Film, Hunger, Real Food, Review

Supersize Me and Food, Inc.

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I made the gross mistake* of viewing these two films in the same day, back to back.  At the end of these I was so disturbed I thought I might not eat for weeks.  To sum up each of these films … Supersize Me is a ground-level, personal view of the issues with our mass-produced food; Food, Inc. gives both a local & global view of massive production of food and how this affects health, national economies, and political decisions.  Watch these, just maybe with a longer break in between the two films than what I took.
(*and I mean ‘gross’ in both ways)

Super Size Me on IMDB.com

Super Size Me on Wikipedia.org

 

Food, Inc. on IMDB.com

Food, Inc. on Wikipedia.org