TED Talks

After watching: “The Global Food Waste Scandal”, “Obesity + hunger = one global food issue”, “The Brain in your Gut”, and “ What's wrong with our food system” I found that there seemed to be a link between these articles, or perhaps something that could be gained from them together.
In “The Global Food Waste Scandal,” Tristram Stuart tells us that the world has a lot of food, and that a lot of that food gets thrown away unnecessarily. A lot more of that food is used to feed habits that many consumers think they need to continue, but aren't actually in anyone's best interest. Excessive beef production means more mouths to feed, and those mouths consume a lot more corn and water than the people who will be fed by the beef would have. Often, some of our agricultural products get lost in translation between the source and the consumer. Another part of the problem is us. The consumers themselves. The idea of “plenty” has been so strongly labeled as desirable that anything less than a surplus is seen as “bad”. That means that many people are cooking far more food than they need to eat, or ordering more at the restaurant than they should because having more looks appealing. This is a blatant waste of food that could have been used in another way. When there are other humans beings starving in our own city and we are eating whole pizzas because they were there, it may be time to honestly look at what's going on. Food waste is real, and a bad distribution of resources is a terrible reason for people to be hungry. This is addressed in Ellen Gustafson's talk, “Obesity + Hunger = 1 global food issue”. Gustafson discusses food distribution and points out that when some of the population is overeating and another portion is undereating, there is potentially a workable solution to the problem. “The Brain in Your Gut” basically gets to the idea that we are wired to know what we need to eat, and how much is the right amount, but sometimes we override that voice and ignore our sensors. I found that interesting in conjunction with Ms. Gustafson's talk because perhaps teaching people to listen to their bodies could be one of the first steps in helping curb the obesity issue. Teaching those with less food options healthy ways to prepare the food they eat and how to cheaply obtain good food would address another factor in unhealthy eating. Finally, Birke Baehr spoke about the way local or smaller farms can both benefit the consumers and avoid causing many of the problems that industrialized factories or farms do. It seems then, that if people became more involved in or aware of what exactly they are eating, then they might be more inclined to treat both their resources and their bodies with informed respect.
Food waste is real, and a bad distribution of resources is a terrible reason for people to be hungry. Not using the resources we have tends to make us think that there is a shortage of quality food, and want to take semi-drastic measures to “solve” problems may not really exist in the forms that we often discuss them.

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