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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Food for thought

That looks good...

Oct. 16 was World Food Day, and I don’t know how many people even noticed or cared.

We say we care about the problems of the world and that we’re trying to fix world hunger, but more than 850 million people go to bed hungry every night. That number is growing by 5 million people each year, according to BBC News.

People suffering from hunger experience vitamin and nutrient deficiencies, causing scurvy and anemia according to BBC news.

A World Food Day quiz put together by BBC, stated some efforts are put forth to ingest nutrients, like the Haitians who eat mud pies to get some calcium.
But for the most part, the lack of nutrients leads to eventual death.

The number of people who die from hunger is roughly equal to the number of deaths caused by AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined according to BBC News. More than 5 million children die from hunger each year. That’s approximately one child every five seconds.

This is completely unreasonable.

It costs only 19 Euro-cents a day to pay for lunch for a hungry child, according to the BBC World Food Day quiz. That’s the equivalent of three pieces of chewing gum.

Sure, we all have our own financial battles. But if I can spend maybe a dollar on chewing gum, then I can surely afford to help feed another person. Not to mention there are other ways to help distribute enough food by saving money.

Did you know that dumpster diving can actually be a respectable hobby?

Many supermarkets throw out foods past their expiration dates, even if they are far from going bad. Entire bags of fruits and vegetables can be thrown to the curb just because of a mild cosmetic blemish.

I think these foods can almost always be used and eaten without any negative consequences as long as you use common sense.

So what would happen if we distributed these foods among the hungry? Obviously we would have more food to work with for soup kitchens or homeless shelters.

Or maybe we could suck it up and go dumpster diving ourselves. By taking these foods that are free and have nothing wrong with them, we end up saving money that can go toward other hungry people in developing nations.

So when the semester ends and you’ve run out of meal points, don’t panic or feel annoyed. Remember that it could always be worse.

It’s just some food for thought.

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