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Does everyone in your family, group of friends or workplace have the same diet? While I love chocolate, I have friends who can’t eat it. Some friends and family are strict vegetarians while others rarely eat a vegetable. Some people may start their day with a smoothie or eggs and bacon or maybe even just a cup of coffee. Some people go hungry.
How people eat is dependent on a number of factors and could vary greatly around the world. Reuters reports that “world leaders are set to endorse a U.N. goal to eliminate hunger by 2030” later this month, but doing so requires the adoption of new eating habits. The change must occur across the board, from the wealthy to the developing nations.
Part of that change, according to Reuters, involves consuming less red meat, reducing food waste and fighting poor nutrition.
“Sustainable and healthy diets will require a move towards a mostly plant-based diet,” Colin Khoury, a biologist at the Colombia-based International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, told Reuters.
There are 795 million people who go hungry each night, Reuters reports. To achieve zero hunger by 2030, we need enough food worldwide to feed them—not just any food, but sustainable, transportable food that will still be viable upon arrival (in other words, less meat and more grains, fruits and vegetables). If meat was eaten only once a week, commodity prices would decrease “as less grain would go to feed animals, making food cheaper for the urban poor,” according to Reuters.
Because incomes are rising and food transportation is getting better, eliminating hunger doesn’t seem like too ambitious a task to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s assistant director-general, Jomo Sundaram. The goal of 2000 to cut the worldwide proportion of hungry people in half was mostly achieved. The FAO reported that there were 216 more hungry people in 1990 than they are now.
“It’s not going to be easy, but if you look at the arithmetic, it is achievable,” Sundaram told Reuters.
Do you think the elimination of hunger worldwide within the next 15 years is achievable? Will farmers change their crops to accommodate the need? Should they?
