foodmuseumblog

BBC - Newsbeat - More young people turn to food banks due to poverty

By Natalie Ostroff, Newsbeat reporter

Paddy Haines was forced to use a food bank to feed his family.

Thousands more young people are turning to food banks because they can't afford to feed themselves or their families.The Trussell Trust which runs the UK's only national network of food banks says it is seeing more 16 to 30-year-olds through its doors.Paddy Haines, 28, turned to a food bank for help when his hours as a chef were cut."We had to pay the rent, the gas and electric and after that there was none left for food," he says."We were so worried for the kids. We were wondering how we were going to put food on the table."

...Newsbeat contacted dozens of food banks across the UK.Most of them said they had seen a big increase in the number of young people coming to them for food. The majority said a third of their clients were between the ages of 16 and 30.

The Trussell Trust said the numbers of people using its food banks had increased from 41,000 last year to almost 61,500 in the past 12 months.In some areas such as Exeter, Cardigan and the Isle of White, the number of young people was as high as 70 to 80%. Paddy Haines, a father of two from Salisbury, told Newsbeat he had never had a handout in his life but said he had to "swallow his pride".

 "If we didn't use the food bank, there was no way I could have fed my family for the week," he says.Usually people are referred to the food bank charity by doctors, social workers or other bodies such as Citizens Advice Bureau. A voucher is issued which can be exchanged for food for one or more people depending on their need.The food bank provides enough food for up to three days and has a mixture of ingredients for three meals.The food is tinned or dried, like pasta, so it won't go off before it's handed out.

Salisbury Food bank manager Mark Ward said most people they saw should have been with them several days before. "People don't like to admit they need help," he says."They will try every possible avenue before they come to us."The first time they come to us they will be very hungry as they would have nothing in the house." There are 78 operating food banks across the UK.Nearly half of those have been opened in the past year due to demand.

via www.bbc.co.uk

Back to Hunting/Gathering in Japan? Solar Cooking?

A photo on the front page of the actual St Petersburg Times riveted me this morning. It showed three Japanese people in Ishinomaki, one with a child on her back, squatting over a makeshift cooking fire, preparing food. The caption indicated they were in front of their " damaged house."

Camping! There we are with our stove teetering on a well-worn picnic bench set in a meadow, a rushing stream at one side, tall pines in the near distance, chipmunks frolicking over downed logs...but camping is what one does to experience the joys of non-civilization. Camping is a recreational choice, whereas across the region impacted by earthquakes and the tsunami, survivors are coping, in a return to the hunter-gatherer camping-style of yore. The resilient, inventive, and healthy will get by.

What are they eating? Foodie peers into their pans and sees fish, traces of greenery, and in a steamer basket, rice. Was this provender scrounged from their ruined home? Dug out of a defunct freezer? Caught from the receding sea?

Maybe it's time to take a deeper look at solar cooking, even though people with ample modernity/electricity/gas never give it a thought.  ( I know, it may be snowing in the Japanese zone right now.) There's a Japanese Solar Cooking Association, affiliated with Solar Cookers World Network. The possibilities of using what is at hand, including the sun, are myriad and fascinating. Take a look here.  India leads the list as a country whose most resource-poor people could benefit from solar cookery.

Meanwhile, this via the bbc:  "The Japanese government is ready to release rice stockpiles wherever needed, the country's farm minister is quoted as saying by the Kyodo news agency."

( Tks to Solar Cookers International for photo.)

Noodles to the Rescue in Earthquake Zone!

Via AP/Canadian press   TOKYO - "Japan's biggest instant noodle maker Nissin says it will deliver 1 million packets to victims of the earthquake and tsunami in the northeast.

Nissin Foods Holdings Co. Ltd. said Sunday it will also deliver "kitchen cars." These are vehicles equipped with gas-powered kitchenettes and running water for cooking noodles.

Japanese beverage maker Suntory Holdings Ltd. says it will deliver 360,000 bottles of water in the disaster zone."

Nissin employs 22,000 people worldwide.

At right, typical ramen cart in Japan, perhaps the "kitchen cars" suggested in the AP piece.

Two years ago a battery-powered, remote-controlled tiny ramen cart replica was introduced in Japan. A must have for The FOOD Museum collection!

Food Scarce in Japanese Earthquake Zone

From bbc.co.uk--

"Thousands of people have spent another freezing night huddled over heaters in emergency shelters along the north-eastern coast. Aid has just begun to trickle into many areas. "All we have to eat are biscuits and rice balls," said Noboru Uehara, 24, a delivery truck driver who was wrapped in a blanket against the cold at a shelter in Iwake. "I'm worried that we will run out of food.""

BBC News - Food prices at dangerous levels, says World Bank

15 February 2011 Last updated at 12:07 ET

The World Bank says food prices are at "dangerous levels" and have pushed 44 million more people into poverty since last June. According to the latest edition of its Food Price Watch, prices rose by 15% in the four months between October 2010 and January this year.Food price inflation is felt disproportionately by the poor, who spend over half their income on food.

The Bank called on this week's G20 meeting to address the problem.The World Bank's president, Robert Zoellick, said in a statement: "Global food prices are rising to dangerous levels and threaten tens of millions of poor people around the world."He also said that rising food prices were an aggravating factor of the unrest in the Middle East, although not its primary cause.

Rapid food price inflation in 2008 sparked riots in a number of countries. At that time, the World Bank estimated 125 million people were in extreme poverty. The World Bank says prices are not quite back at those levels - just 3% below - although they are 27% higher than a year ago.A separate report earlier this month from the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said that world food prices had hit a record high in January. Finance ministers and central bankers from the G20 group of developed and developing nations are meeting later this week in Paris.

via www.bbc.co.uk

Revolutionary Food

His death by fire sparked a massive revolution in Tunisia. Mohammed Bouazizi bought fruit at a night market, to sell from his handcart by day, in a small town in the middle of Tunisia. His primary goal was to start a business that would be profitable enough to support sending his sisters to University---apparently his frustrations over bribes and bullying from police, random shutting down of his tiny business, led him to burn himself up as a protest.

Two weeks after Bouazizi died, Tunisians had ousted their president, in power for 23 years. One major cause of discontent beyond  unresponsive and repressive governments there and in Egypt, Algeria, Yemen --- a rapid rise in food prices. Egypt is a major importer of wheat, currently selling "at historic highs," according to the USDA. Some fear a reprise of the "bread riots"of 1977, when  thousands of the poor in Egypt protested government removal of subsidies on flour, bread and oil.

In April 1863 Southern women in Richmond, struggling to find enough food for their families during the Civil War, began looting stores, shouting, "Bread, bread!" Similarly, women living in what was then called Petrograd--St Petersburg, Russia--in Februrary 1917 were fed up waiting on bread lines 40 hours a week, due to bakery failures and shortages. Their occupation of the city over two days, demanding more bread, was broken up by the army, and the violence that ensued helped propel Vladimir Lenin to the top in Russia a few months later.

Bread!  Imagine America's thin-o-scenti, in fast flight from bread and pasta, inspired by such a rallying cry.

Notes: http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/historian/hist_figes_04_bread.html; http://civilwar.bluegrass.net/HomeFront/breadriot.html

 

 

Hunger in America: 2 Versions

Excerpts from the USDA release November 16 on Household Food Security in the US :

"... in 2008, 17 million households, or 14.6 percent, were food insecure and families had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year. This is an increase from 13 million households, or 11.1 percent, in 2007. The 2008 figures represent the highest level observed since nationally representative food security surveys were initiated in 1995. The full study is available at www.ers.usda.gov/features/householdfoodsecurity/.

This year's report also reveals that one third of food insecure households had very low food security (food intake of some household members was reduced and their eating patterns disrupted at times during the year). This is 5.7 percent of all U.S. households or about 6.7 million. This is up from 4.7 million households (4.1 percent) in 2007, and the highest level observed since nationally representative food security surveys were initiated in 1995. "

And 1.3% of households with children were not able adequately to feed those children, apparently.

Who is "food insecure?"  The poor.

Others in America are " food moronic."  Cartoonist Tom Toles of the Washington Post features them here.   (Wed., Nov. 18.)

The report goes on:

"As the Obama Administration works to foster a robust recovery for all, it's important to recognize that we have another opportunity to improve the health and nutrition of our children when Congress begins to debate the Child Nutrition Reauthorization," said ( Secretary of Agriculture Tom) Vilsack. "It is vital that we make it easier for families and administrators to bring eligible children into the program and to eliminate gap periods when children struggle to find the nutrition assistance they need - at breakfast, during summer, and in after-school settings."

Piracy, Food, Diplomacy, And All That

Our new favorite criminals, Somali pirates, were just foiled in their attempt to halt the progress of yet another American freighter, the Liberty Sun.

According to an AP story by Elizabeth A. Kennedy, "The ship, with 20 American mariners, had left Houston with a load of humanitarian food aid for the U.N. World Food Program. Some of that aid was destined for Somalia, where nearly half the country's 7 million people depend on food aid."

Further on in the article,  "U.N. spokesman Peter Smerdon said more food aid was to have been delivered by another cargo ship hijacked by pirates on Tuesday, the Lebanese-owned MV Sea Horse. It was headed to Mumbai, India, to pick up 7,327 tons of WFP food for Somalia.

"WFP is also extremely concerned that people in Somalia will go hungry unless the Sea Horse is quickly released or a replacement ship can be found," Smerdon said."

Do we really believe pirates think they  "... are fighting illegal fishing and dumping of toxic waste in Somali waters?"  If this is true, then clearly these are concerns to be discussed by diplomats.

Perhaps illegal fishing was once the issue, but I suspect now that the pirates are young guys given guns, exploited by their organized crime handlers, and used to extort vast sums of money from shipping companies and others for purposes unknown. ( Food aid decidedly not among them.)

Food Bank Coming to MY Neighborhood

This weekend I noticed that one of my neighbors was selling burritos and lemonade at the end of her driveway.  She clearly was fund-raising for something, taking advantage of the crowds piling into both the baseball and soccer fields nearby. When I stopped to speak with her I learned that she was trying to raise $100, enough to secure a delivery from the local Roadrunner Food Bank.

Here? $100?  "People are hurting," she said, "Right in this area. I see kids going home from school with their backpacks loaded with food from school-- extra little milks, crackers...That never happened before."  The food bank will distribute from a truck in an appropriate public parking lot for $100 a month.

I bought a burrito for $2 and handed it to a hungry young guy visiting me. We all started to talk about people losing their jobs, their homes, the food issue, and of course I put in my pitch for everyone to start growing some veggies in containers. 

Ironically, this neighbor was the same woman who had stopped caring for the well-established pear, peach and apple trees in her garden soon after she moved in. I had noticed that the apple tree was thick with fruit, but no one was picking it. Mentioning that I knew the fruit was delicious from years past,   I offered to harvest the apples, just keeping a bag for myself.  She said "Well, we buy our fruit from the supermarket, so...."  

Change is coming.

Let 'Em Eat Dirt--Those Not Invited to the Mugabe Party, That Is

In case you're into having a good time with a relentless dictator, here's Robert Mugabe's gustatory wish list for his February 21 birthday feast: (Apparently people/corporations are being asked to supply either the raw materials or large outlays of cash.)

2,000 bottles of champagne — Moët & Chandon and ’61 Bollinger
500 bottles of whisky — Johnny Walker Blue Label, 22-year-old Chivas
8,000 lobsters
100kg king prawns
3,000 ducks
4,000 portions of caviar
8,000 boxes of Ferrero Rocher
16,000 eggs
3,000 cakes — chocolate and vanilla
4,000 packs of pork sausages
500kg cheese
4,000 packets of crackers

All this while his country Zimbabwe is ravaged by assorted horrors. As reported by the Times OnLine--"...seven million citizens survive on international food aid, 94 per cent are jobless and cholera rampages through a population debilitated by hunger."

The Times notes a Mugabe caveat re local eats: “No mealie meal” — the ground corn staple on which the vast majority of Zimbabweans survived until the country’s collapse rendered even that a luxury."

President Mugabe will be 85. We have no idea who he is expecting to join him for dinner.

Groceries on $25 a Week

Over 30 million Americans are now on Food Stamps---that's 1 in ten. You can buy any food, except pet food, and prepared meals, with the stamps, as well as seeds and plants to grow.
Back in May of 2007, the Washington Post ran this piece on some Congressmen who decided to see how they could eat on the then average of $21 a week for one person using food stamps.
I found a more recent exploration of this at $25 a week  on the blog Cheap Healthy Good.

Most likely, not many organic veggies on that budget. I am picturing a small  basket filled with dried beans and lentils, garlic and onion, oil, dried milk, corn meal, sweet potatoes. Hmmm. Not easy!

I may try this for real next time at the store. (The folks cited above went heavily for canned goods.)
Incidentally, a 90-something low income couple we know relies heavily on Save A Lot, a no frills grocery store. It does have lots of fresh veggies, though not organic, and it requires the customer to bag his/her own groceries, with an option of using the store's old cartons.  Here's how the corporate entity, Supervalu Inc. that owns Albertson's and Jewel Osco, among other chains, describes Save A Lot:

"SAVE-A-LOT^® is the nation's leading extreme value, limited-assortment grocery chain, operating more than 1,170 value-oriented stores in all types of neighborhoods - urban, rural and suburban - and delivering terrific savings of up to 40 percent compared to conventional grocery stores."

"Extreme value!" Exciting times, indeed.

ps   Supervalu ( grrr......)  is spelled correctly.

First Family Food Bankers--Happy Thanksgiving!

( Thanks to Jean Lachat, Chicago Sun-Times, for photo.)

"Food Insecure" Americans and Other Food News

• Apparently if Americans cannot buy enough food for themselves or their families, according to the USDA, they are "food insecure" rather than "hungry." The USDA recently released a lengthy report that contained these items, among many others:  ---About 4.7 million of the 13 million food insecure households in 2007 had very low food security, with household members skipping meals or taking other steps to reduce the amount they ate because of a lack of resources. The size of this group and its share of the overall population have risen steadily over the past decade.
    ---The number of children with very low food security rose by over 60 percent, to 691,000.
  
  ---The number of food insecure seniors living alone rose by 26 percent, to 783,000.
• Farmers in Platteville,  Colorado opened their 600 acre spread to "gleaners" this season expecting maybe 5000-10,000 visitors--40,000 people showed up and went away with 600,000 pounds of free potatoes, carrots and leeks.  The Miller family was astonished by the numbers but frankly I was amazed that there was that much veggie material left after the harvest.
• Meanwhile, foodies are aquiver over who the Obamas will name as head chef for the White House. ( Most likely NOT Gordon Ramsey...)   Chef Cristeta Comerford will probably keep her position in the near term.
• Have I raved as yet about the film Dinner Rush?  OK, it's "old," from 2000, but I picked it up at my local library for free, so just relax. Most of the action takes place in an actual restaurant owned by the director, Bob Giraldi, so the feel of the flick is garlic, olive oil and wine saturated. The filmic restaurant is owned by a bookie, the plot thickens, and ends with a twist.  Recommended both as a foodie treat, and as a low-key thriller.

Refugees Hungry in Eastern Congo

Aid workers in the Congo are concerned about feeding people caught between fighting forces in eastern Congo, as the cease fire between rebel and government troops fizzles. According to today's AP story,

"''I haven't eaten properly in three weeks,'' said Teoneste Dies, 22. He fled his home three weeks ago with his wife and three children, surviving on the few potatoes they could scrounge.

On Tuesday, he waited with thousands of others for food aid from the International Committee of the Red Cross. The organization was distributing 45 metric tons of food -- enough to feed each family for 10 days.

In Kibati, six miles from Goma, about 70,000 people are living in makeshift camps. A long line snaked through town Tuesday morning as villagers picked up oil, maize flour, salt and beans."

Millions  have died in the Congo in recent years, while diplomats from the West and Africa try to sort out the mess. Unlike Sudan,  the Congo has no oil,  one reason, perhaps, why the global public has not been riveted on its travail.

But it does have suffering, hungry people, cut off from the bountiful world.

Fashionably Thin and Homeless in Posh America

Parking before starting a morning stroll along one of America's more pricey strips of waterfront at Coffee Pot Bayou in St. Petersburg, FL, I noticed a woman and two cute dogs in the next vehicle. It appeared they were living there.

She got out and I got out, we exchanged "Good morning" greetings, and I walked over to peer into the shallows at  silver schools of fish hanging like clouds over the heads of the much bigger sheepshead or convict fish, dressed in their usual snappy black and white stripes. Then I turned back to the reed-thin woman and asked, lamely, "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, apparently, you are living in your car."

"You got that right!"

So....her life was in confusing flux, one of her children might come down from Michigan to help her, her dogs' toenails needed clipping, she wanted to air out her bedding, and, thank God, she made coffee every morning here at Coffee Pot Bayou, cleverly and illegally, by setting up her own Mister Coffee machine on a picnic table and using electricity from a plug presumably  readied for Christmas lighting.

I noticed good rings on her left hand, and traces of a decent dye job on her hair, and officially met her dogs, Suzy and Banjo. We'll call the woman Barb.

I suggested that the Quakers, among others, distributed food on Friday afternoons, but couldn't recall the exact location.

"I would have to drive there, wherever, most likely, and I'm way low on gas."  We laughed together, at the irony of having a movable home that was a liability if it could not move, since Barb could be in trouble with authorities if she tried to spend the entire night on C.P. Bayou.

So I gave her some $$$, and she and the doggies sputtered swiftly out of the parking lot. After the gas purchase, Barb said she would head to McD's for a cheeseburger. She said she could get it for a buck.

Earlier I had read on-line about economists predicting a 7% rise in food prices in 2009--food from cows, poultry and hogs--because of higher feed costs. So much for the cheap burger.

Maybe by 2009 Barb will have found her way. It's only two months away.

( Thanks to arichny.blogspot.com/.../coffee-pot-bayou.html for the pic. My camera was elsewhere...)

Hungry People on This Planet

Today is World Food Day. As reported by Reuters Africa,  "The world's leading crusaders against hunger voiced frustration on World Food Day on Thursday that the global financial crisis had overshadowed a food crisis tipping millions towards starvation. 

The World Bank predicts that high food and fuel prices will increase the number of malnourished people in the world by 44 million this year to reach a total of 967 million."

Ellen Parry Tyler writes for Food First that, "The U.S. food system allows one in six children to go hungry for at least part of each month. Hungry children are not healthy and don’t learn as well as well-fed children. Poor families across our nation have been told to wait as global leaders analyze the causes and solutions to our current food crisis. Food banks face food shortages while the number of Americans showing up at their door is rapidly increasing. In the wake of the $700 billion dollar Wall Street bailout, one wonders what our country could accomplish if $700 billion were instead spent on Main Street."

Today is also our thankfully well-nourished son's birthday. We cherish him, as parents the world over cherish their children. No parent anywhere should have to suffer a child's hunger.

More Rice: Sometimes A Great Notion... Is Simple

It requires no expensive GM seed and no fancy fertilizers. It simply takes a change in thinking and doing. Plant rice early, make sure each plant has a good deal of room, and don't flood the paddy or field in which it grows.  Cornell professor Norman Uphoff believes this practice doubles harvest results. He apparently has pissed off the World Bank-funded International Rice Research Institute with this concept because if true, this approach could effectively diminish its influence in the developing world. Some Third World farmers have been wary of this idea, too, as it goes against millennia of farm practice.

Father Henri de Laulanié, a Jesuit priest working in Madagascar, first developed the method that has so impressed Uphoff. Even though he doubts it's really necessary, Uphoff has arranged for international field trials of System of Rice Intensification or SRI, to be overseen by IRRI, Cornell and Netherlands-based Wageningen University. The trials will likely begin next year.

Of Islands, Hunger, and Yes, We Have No Eggs

Haitians are apparently not satisfied eating mudcakes for survival---in Port Au Prince they are rioting, and looting, and demanding the resignation of president Rene Preval in part because global food prices  have risen 40% in the past year, a fact particularly affecting islanders who import most of what they eat. Their staple, rice, is expensively imported more than it should be, thus diminishing local production. Taxes on food, too, appear to be an issue. Food that is on shelves in cities is too costly for the poor to buy. According to today's AP story, about 80% of the people struggle to survive on about $2 per day.

Many of those who marched on the capital chanted "we are hungry!," according to a report from The Canadian Press. Haitian riots followed protests in Egypt and elsewhere, prompting a UN official to state that "food insecurity" is a major threat to world stability.

Meanwhile, speaking of islands, when we recently visited family in the Abacos, Bahamas, we stayed in Hope Town, a place filled with well-off vacationers. Food, and most other domestic goods available at local groceries, was outlandishly expensive when compared to prices for the same items on the Florida coast. Even eggs were not raised locally for sale---people are dependent on small ferry boats for everything, and during a three day period of stormy seas, the hunt for eggs became paramount. Not, mind you, for human survival.  It was Easter weekend, you see.

Early one morning, still in my robe, I walked from our seaside abode onto a small road heading into the lush undergrowth, following the sound of a rooster crowing, hoping  to locate at least one local source of something to eat. After a bit I turned back on reflecting that my inappropriate garb might have caused the rooster's owner to have me arrested by the constabulary ( one guy) for some form of peeping or stalking or other addlepated old dame behavior.

Even the mere threat of " food insecurity" has me pondering( not for the first time,)  where to live,  what to grow, how to harvest enough water for growing, and how to get "off the grid" in time to do all the above.  Perhaps my Jack Russell might be cajoled into trotting along on some kind of power-generating treadmill so that I could maintain my link to the Internets, too.

Real Issues, Please, Not Faux

While the candidates fool around with non issues such as answering old-fashioned 1950's red phones,  who has experience and what kind, and my commander-in-chief mojo is fiercer than yours,-- ( I even heard 46 year-old Barack Obama described as a "callow youth." Please!)--- violence continues and even escalates in many parts of the world, oil prices reach appalling heights, oh--and the world is slowly getting hungry as wheat and other staple grains become  scarce commodities. Amazing.

According to this report from Scotland's Sunday Herald, "More than 73 million people in 78 countries that depend on food handouts from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) are facing reduced rations this year. The increasing scarcity of food is the biggest crisis looming for the world'', according to WFP officials.

At the same time, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that rising prices have triggered a food crisis in 36 countries, all of which will need extra help. The threat of malnutrition is the world's forgotten problem'', says the World Bank as it demands urgent action."

Price rises are due to a surge in demand, worsening droughts, and increasingly, the growing of foods for bio-fuels, instead of for feeding people and animals. The report continues:

"High (wheat) prices have already prompted a string of food protests around the world, with tortilla riots in Mexico, disputes over food rationing in West Bengal and protests over grain prices in Senegal, Mauritania and other parts of Africa. In Yemen, children have marched to highlight their hunger, while in London last week hundreds of pig farmers protested outside Downing Street."

"The US currently grows one-sixth of its grain harvest for cars, which is madness," ( Robin Maynard of the UK Soil Association,) told the Sunday Herald."

Food, Lies and War--Ethiopia

Food aid for hundreds of thousands of people in the eastern Somali-border area of Ethiopia known as Ogaden is being cut off by the government in order to squeeze what they view a rebel forces opposed to the regime. At the same time food as well as money  is being siphoned off and reallocated by members of the Ethiopian military.

According to the NYTimes, ..."food aid is embezzled in two stages. First, soldiers skim sacks of grain, tins of vegetable oil and bricks of high-energy biscuits from food warehouses to sell at local markets.

“The cash is distributed among security officers and regional officers,” a former government administrator from the Ogaden region said in a recent telephone interview on condition of anonymity because he still works with government officials.

Then the remaining food is hauled out to rural areas where the soldiers divert part of it to local gunmen and informers as a reward for helping them fight the rebels. The former administrator said he also knew of specific cases in which army officers stole food from warehouses and gave it to the families of women whom their soldiers had raped, as compensation.

Several Western humanitarian officials estimated that 20 to 30 percent of the donor countries’ food aid to the Ogaden — aid that last year was valued at more than $70 million — routinely disappears this way. To cover their tracks, the soldiers and the government administrators who work with them tell the aid agencies that the food has spoiled, or has been stolen or hijacked by the rebels, humanitarian officials said."