Food issues
As we saw in the last
chapter, one of the biggest problems with food in the West is waste, with
scandalous quantities of edible goods being discarded as a result of
stock-piling and misguided beliefs about ‘out of date’ foods being ‘rotten’.
Another problem in the UK,
and other developed countries, is over-indulgence, with high percentages of the
population being obese. This stands in stark contrast to the near one billion
people in the world who are currently hungry.
Currently there is
sufficient food to feed everyone in the world, but this is not achieved due to
profligacy in the West and poor distribution mechanisms in the developing
world. By 2050 our food systems will have to feed 50 per cent more people than
they do today.
However, in addition to
population increase, the situation is set to worsen with the onset of climate
change, as explored in Chapter 2.