Volunteers Succeed at Eliminating Food Waste and Hunger

Food waste and hunger are enormous global, environmental, and public health problems.  As overwhelming as these issues are, community groups, volunteers, local businesses, and organizations are working on trying to find a solution.

What started as a social action project in 2004, a few members of a small community in metro-Atlanta, Georgia took up the challenge to feed people in need and eliminate food waste.

And they’re succeeding!

The project grew into a non-profit organization with a team of more than 400 volunteer drivers, a network of more than 50 donors, and front-line agencies who feed the hungry on a daily basis.

Amazingly, the entire group has rescued more than 5.5 million pounds of food — enough to provide 4.6 million meals.  Here’s more of this motivating, against-all-odds story.

Food Waste and Hunger

About a third of the planet’s food goes to waste. That’s enough to feed two billion people.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) report that about one-third of all food produced worldwide — worth around $ 1 trillion — are lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems.

Furthermore, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) cites the following:

“Forty percent of the food in the United States is never eaten. But at the same time, one in eight Americans struggles to put enough food on the table.”

Nearly 800 million people worldwide suffer from hunger. But according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, we squander enough food — globally, 2.9 trillion pounds a year — to feed every one of them more than twice over.

In developing nations, much of the food is lost after harvest, because of the lack of refrigeration, good roads, and adequate storage facilities. On the other hand, developed nations waste more food when retailers order, display, or serve too much.

Additionally, consumers waste food when they ignore leftovers in the back of their refrigerators — or toss perishable food out before it expires.

More Alarming Statistics of Wasted Food

Much of the wasted food in the U.S. ends up in landfills.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that food waste is the second largest category of municipal solid waste sent to landfills in the United States.

And it accounts for about 18 percent of the waste stream.  That’s more than 30 million tons of food waste that the U.S. sends to the landfills each year.

Additionally, according to NRDC, on average, people dining out leave 17 percent of meals uneaten and 55 percent of these potential leftovers are not taken home.

In spite of the dismal statistics on food waste — and the struggles and pain hungry people endure — community groups, organizations, local businesses, and volunteers in metro-Atlanta, Georgia are making headway in not wasting food and feeding people in need.

People Are Fed, Perishable Food Not Wasted

More than ten years ago, a few members of a community in metro-Atlanta, Georgia took up the challenge to feed people in need and eliminate food waste.  They wanted to take leftover fresh food from grocery stores and restaurants and quickly deliver it to agencies that provide food to families and individuals in need.

Since the first delivery was made in 2004, the group has “rescued” more than 5.5 million pounds of food.  And the group believes this figure equals enough to provide more than 4.6 million meals.

As success mounted in eliminating food waste and feeding people in their community, the group established itself as a non-profit organization called Second Helpings Atlanta.  Now, Second Helpings Atlanta has 62 donors, 31 partner agencies, and a team of more than 400 volunteer drivers who pick up and drop off perishable food every day.

Executive Director Joe Labriola says, “The challenge is getting the food from those who have it to those who need it, and that’s what we do.  We play a very specific role. We do 125 scheduled pickups and deliveries a week. We’ve gotten pretty good at this.”

Fresh Food versus Non-Perishable

Fresh food provides more nutrition than the non-perishable, processed diet that so many people eat — especially people with low or no income.  One of Second Helpings Atlanta’s goals is to change that standard, offering fresh food that will ideally help prompt healthier eating habits.

This year, the group has delivered 962,635 pounds of food and Labriola estimates they will pick up and deliver more than 1.3 million pounds by the end of the year.

“The reason we’re so focused on perishable food is that we’re providing nutrition to the diets of people who are surviving on processed food.  We’re breaking the cycle and hope that some of the health benefits of fresh food will start to kick in.”

According to Labriola, he sees no reason why this type of food waste program can’t easily be adopted anywhere. He adds that 40 percent of the food produced in the U.S. is never consumed.  And the average annual cost per household of food that is thrown out is $ 650.

Twenty percent of people in Georgia live in a food-insecure environment — meaning they’re not sure when they’re going to eat next.  “It’s a pretty grim story,” Labriola says. “But if we rescue just 15 percent of that food, we can feed 25 million Americans.”

How it’s Working

When people sign up to volunteer, they’re shown the available routes.  Then they’re asked to choose the route that would work best with their location and schedule.

Most pickups are regularly scheduled.  However, the group often gets calls from people holding weddings, bar mitzvahs, or festivals — knowing there will be leftover food at the end of the night.  Then, a call goes out to find a volunteer to help pickup and delivery the leftover food.

Volunteer drivers make food deliveries every day of the year, except Christmas.  Food pickups range in size — so people can pick them up no matter if they own a small sedan or a minivan. That way volunteering is within the reach of everyone.

From the time a driver leaves home — stopping to pick up the food and drop it off at a partner agency — it usually takes no longer than 90 minutes for he or she to return home.

Families Volunteer

Quite often, entire families will volunteer and work together for the weekly delivery service. Labriola says families volunteering are instrumental to educating younger generations about hunger and food waste.

For example, around Thanksgiving, a family with two young children met Labriola one day to pick up dozens of turkeys at a grocery store. The children looked amazed as they helped carry the delivery — bird-by-bird — from the store to the truck, and into the agency that would distribute them to families.  Labriola told the kids they just helped feed 225 families.  The children soon realized what they did.  One of the children said, “That’s as many kids that are in my school!”

The exemplary work and dedication exhibited by volunteers in the metro-Atlanta, Georgia community is a truly successful model of how to eliminate food waste and hunger.  Perhaps more community groups, organizations, local businesses, and volunteers will consider following their worthy example.

Volunteers Succeed at Eliminating Food Waste and Hunger

The surprising science of water fasting (no food, no hunger)

If you’ve never done a very low calorie diet or even a pure water fast, you may have some trouble relating to this:

Science has proven that eating little to no food could actually be the key to getting rid of hunger and cravings, two major issues that annoy us heavily during just about any weight loss diet.

In other words, extreme diets like water fasting could ultimately be easier to handle than some of the way less restrictive weight loss diets.

And just for the record, I’m not writing this to convince you to go on some extreme diet, but because I think this really is an amazing phenomenon.

Zero food CAN equal zero hunger and cravings

In one study^[1], they measured the intensity of hunger and cravings in two groups of people:

1. A water fasting group (people in this group ate no food at all).


2. A standard dieting group (people in this group ate a “balanced” weight loss diet).

And here’s the amazing thing that happened:

At the end of two weeks of going completely without food, the feelings of hunger and cravings dropped close to zero in the water fasting group. But in the standard dieting group, the hunger and cravings didn’t drop at all (they kept going strong throughout the diet).

One more study^[2], in which people ate no food for as long as 117! days, also confirmed that “Hunger was virtually absent” during a water fast.

So no matter how hard that may be to believe, science has shown that the key to getting rid of hunger could actually be staying away from food altogether.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the diets that were less restrictive than water fasting (but still pretty restrictive).

A 400-calorie diet causes less hunger than a 1200-calorie diet

One study^[3] compared a very restrictive diet (500 calories per day), to a “balanced” weight loss diet (1200 calories per day).

Even though people on the standard weight loss diet ate more than twice as many calories, they still reported stronger hunger than people who were on the more restrictive 500-calorie diet.

Another study^[4] proved that a 400-calorie diet was able to reduce appetite, hunger, anxiety, and preoccupation with food in comparison to a balanced 1200-calorie weight loss diet (even though the diet allowed for three times as many calories).

So there you go. Against all common sense, modern science proves less food CAN mean less hunger.

Can any low calorie diet/fast reduce your cravings?

No, not exactly.

When it comes to hunger and cravings during rapid fat loss dieting, it’s not just about how much food you eat, but mostly about the kind of foods you eat.

So, unless you’re willing to completely give up food and do a pure water fast, low calorie diets will only decrease your hunger if you use a specific combination of foods.

We’re talking mostly protein-rich foods (not all of them will do the trick, but here’s a short list to get you started) and some other substances that have been proven to reduce appetite (like caffeine, for example).

But going into all the details would definitely be beyond the scope of this article.

The whole point I’m trying to get across here is, you should never dismiss a diet just because it seems too restrictive for you.

Or in other words, just because a food plan looks less restrictive on paper, that doesn’t automatically mean it will actually be easier to follow.

Does hunger really disappear 100% during water fasting?

Before I ever tried water fasting, I honestly thought I could never pull off something as extreme as going completely without food for days.

And when you try fasting for the very first time, things can get a little scary. Especially in those first couple of days, when you’re still transitioning into ketosis.

But once you get through that awkward first stage, hunger DOES become a lot easier to handle.

Now, this is just my personal experience, but once I get a few days deep into a fast, I sometimes feel like I no longer care about food at all. I literally feel like I could go on without food for weeks if I chose to.

But the truth is, even though water fasting can numb your hunger and cravings (while delivering insanely fast weight loss results), it certainly isn’t without flaws.

The number one problem with water fasting is the rapid destruction of “structural protein”, the basic building blocks of your muscles and vital organs^[5].

So, while water fasting does have the amazing ability to virtually eliminate your hunger, I certainly can’t recommend it as a sustainable (long term) way to lose weight. But you can go here to learn more about a type of fast that was specifically designed to reverse that unnecessary destruction of your muscle mass and vital organ tissue.

The surprising science of water fasting (no food, no hunger)

World in a week: Thai military ban the use of the "Hunger Games" salute

Good week for …

Eric Chinje, the former celebrity presenter of Cameroon Radio and Television, who has been appointed managing director of African Media Initiative.

Abdullah Abdullah, the front-runner in Afghan’s presidential election, who survived a suicide bomb attack targeted at his convoy in Kabul.

Poor week for …

Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s new president, who manufactured extremely ambitious promises during his campaign, and has now been criticised for setting unrealistic targets.

Thai protesters, as the Thai military have announced the ban of a three finger salute a symbol of protest adopted from the common guide and movie series The Hunger Games.

What you’re saying

Thursday marked the 6 month anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s death. As portion of our project to showcase South Africa’s new generation of shining lights, we interviewed Dalene von Delft, a doctor and founder of TB Evidence. On Twitter, @Sionkwilliams manufactured an fascinating comment about her story.

The week in numbers

300,000 Guyanese will advantage from diminished flooding and climate hazards as a consequence of a $ 11m grant from the Global Development Association.

228 tusks have been seized by Kenyan police in this year’s most significant unlawful ivory haul.

208 people have died from the Ebola virus in Guinea right after a latest deadly spike.

62 people have died off of Yemen’s coast in “the worst sinking incident in the area this year”, in accordance to reviews by the UN agency.

Picture of the week

A pupil hugs a tree while celebrating Planet Surroundings Day at the forest of Gokarna, on the outskirt of capital Kathmandu, Nepal.

A total of two,001 men and women hugged trees to attempt to keep a Guinness World record. Photograph: Narendra Shrestha/EPA

Milestones

A date has been set to trial the world’s initial leprosy vaccine. Toxicology tests for it are scheduled to start just before the finish of the 12 months, and clinical trials in humans need to get started by 2015.

Tuesday was the 79th anniversary of the death of Yousaf Aziz Magsi, a novelist who struggled for independence of Balochistan from British rule. A celebration took area in Pakistan, to don’t forget his life’s work.

The 25th anniversary this week of the Chinese onslaught on Tiananmen has revived worries about human rights in China. The nation has been preemptively detaining protesters for the final month in anticipation of the occasion.

On Friday, hundreds of Sikhs gathered at India’s Golden Temple to don’t forget individuals killed in the June 6 raid in 1984, specifically 30 many years in the past, but the ceremony quickly turned to chaos.

Infographic

Calestous Juma, a Havard professor, tweeted an infographic which charts the connection between China and Africa.

Studying listing

Coming next week: have your say

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World in a week: Thai military ban the use of the "Hunger Games" salute

From child hunger to obesity: Brazil"s new wellness scourge

One particular in three kids in Brazil are obese since of processed food and unregulated advertising. Photograph: Stefano Rellandini/Reuters

Given that it was established in 1982, the Brazilian NGO Pastoral da Criança used weight to ascertain whether a little one was unhealthy. Not too long ago, that had to change when they started to see far more and far more obesity in poor communities. “As we started out noticing some kids were obese, we had to change our practices fully,” says nutritionist Paula Pizzatto. “Now height and the BMI [body mass index] are also taken into consideration.”

When Pastoral da Criança first commenced its operate, malnutrition and lack of standard childcare had been the result in of high infant mortality charges – eight.three% in 1980 (pdf). By engaging and coaching neighborhood leaders to carry out regular visits to local families, the organisation encouraged far more breastfeeding and prenatal care. At the same time, the government’s zero hunger programme took hundreds of thousands of Brazilians out of excessive poverty and more than halved (pdf) the costs of kid mortality. In accordance to the Planet Meals Programme, hunger has an effect on only six.9% of Brazil’s population now. However, these extraordinary statistics do not indicate that most Brazilians are healthier. The last figures launched by the wellness ministry demonstrate that 51% of country’s population are overweight and one particular in 3 kids age five to nine is obese (pdf).

A money transfer scheme acknowledged called Bolsa Família allowed many who had been when excluded from the free market to grow to be customers. “Dad and mom who have been undernourished as kids can now put a bottle of Coca-Cola on their tables. It is a matter of status. They truly feel proud,” says Pizzato.

Companies rapidly understood there was a industry of new consumers to investigate. Door-to-door marketing of inexpensive merchandise as nicely as tailor-created payment options permitted slum dwellers and remote communities to get food with out travelling to the supermarket, so processed merchandise grew to become a lot more accessible than fresh fruit and vegetables.

Most people in the poorest communities in Brazil are underneath-educated, generating them far more vulnerable to advertising. For instance, Nestle’s floating supermarket navigates the Amazon with a effective market campaign that claims to “provide access to nutrition, well being and wellbeing to the remote community of the north region”. But it primarily sells yoghurts, ice cream and chocolate.

“Quality of the meals is now more of an situation than entry to it,” says Arnoldo de Campos, secretary for the Nationwide Secretariat for Food and Nutritional Safety. “We even now have a tiny fraction of individuals that don’t have access to food, in isolated rural regions or indigenous communities, but the most critical dilemma now is obesity.”

Pastoral’s stick to-up dietary programme focuses on the initial one,000 days of lifestyle of the infant, which includes the time he or she is in the womb. Providing healthy nutrition for the duration of this initial stage of life is vital to avert the two malnutrition and obesity. The programme is even now new and has only been introduced in 23 of the 27 Brazilian states. “So far, we have practically 13,000 youngsters underneath the dietary programme,” says Pizzato. “About eleven% are overweight or obese and about two% are undernourished.” A lack of playgrounds in needy communities and nationwide maternity depart of only four months, which implies that babies can not be breastfed solely for the initial six months, contributes to the problem.

The total benefits of the nutritional programme haven’t been published yet, but Pastoral is quite mindful of the problems that lie ahead. “It is less difficult to introduce a new feeding habit when dealing with malnutrition, but it is certainly a lot more hard to correct current ones, when the entire family is concerned,” said Pizzatto.

The government recognises the seriousness of the problem. In 2011, it developed the Intersectoral Approach for Management and Prevention of Obesity, which began, among other factors, the promotion of overall health feeding routines in public schools. But despite all the efforts, combating obesity will be an arduous activity.

“We have a poorly legislated production program which is addicted to negative-top quality foods and unregulated advertising practices,” says de Campos. “For instance, the newest Coca-Cola slogan is ‘open happiness’, for a soft drink complete of sugar. It is a lot more challenging to tackle obesity than hunger.”

Study far more stories like this:

• Prime 10 tweeters on nutrition

• Move in excess of rice, baobab and spider plant could be the new staple crops

• Lessons from Latin America: how to increase the middle class

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From child hunger to obesity: Brazil"s new wellness scourge

2014: the 12 months we defeat child hunger?

More than one particular-third of the world’s malnourished and stunted children are in India. Photograph: Mahesh Kumar A/AP

2013 was a golden yr for nutrition, with ramped up political attention and huge financial pledges. But 2014 has to be the 12 months when this momentum is translated into measurable impact and little one stunting from lack of healthier food drastically reduces across the world.

There has been significantly recent discourse on ‘scaling up’ in nutrition, but what do we indicate by it? In response to the sobering phrases of the 1st Lancet Nutrition Series in 2008, which described the worldwide nutrition technique as “fragmented and dysfunctional,” the Scaling Up Nutrition (Sun) motion is now driving the global momentum.

Forty five nations (which incorporate practically 60% of the world’s stunted kids) have now signed up to the Sun movement – the glaring exception is India, house to more than one particular third of the world’s stunted children. In London final June, the Nutrition for Growth summit created background by generating more than $ 23bn (£14bn) in pledges to tackle undernutrition (more than $ 4bn for nutrition-certain and $ 19bn for nutrition-delicate interventions).

The Sun movement and Nutrition for Growth have both made progress on the problem, but if 2014 is to be the yr when important numbers of kids obtain much better nutrition then we need to realize how to attain far more youngsters. We need to have clear techniques, to discover from the previous, and assess capacity.

Even though most emphasis on quantitative aspects of scaling, we can’t overlook quality. In the late 1990s, India rushed to universalise its major nutrition programme, the integrated kid growth scheme, to cover all its districts – and nevertheless there was little adjust in malnutrition ranges in the many years that followed. Boxes may have been ticked, but many villages didn’t have the signifies to put into action the scheme.

The state of Maharashtra (which just lately joined Sun, regardless of India’s determination not to) has given that shown what is achievable. Responding to reports of a wave of child deaths from starvation in marginalised tribal districts despite a state-wide economic boom, a nutrition mission was launched. The mission centered on strengthening implementation of present programmes. Making certain that current vacancies had been filled and frontline employees had been supported by systems of instruction, supervision and monitoring (aimed at motivating, not policing) paid massive dividends. The frequency and high quality of interaction amongst community workers and mothers enhanced enormously, and the charge of stunting decline between 2005 and 2012 was much more than quadruple that of 1999 to 2005.

A generation just before, a similar technique in Thailand underpinned its wonderful leap forward, when kid undernutrition rates plummeted during the 1980s. The breakthrough right here came with the use of basic minimum needs indicators for community and district organizing by teams of community leaders, nutrition and wellness professionals, mid-level government officials, representatives from NGOs and district chiefs of a variety of sectors. Primarily based on the troubles uncovered by these indicators, a ‘menu’ of nutrition-pertinent actions was developed and implemented. A crucial aspect in the project’s success was a manageable ratio of community-degree mobilisers and district-level facilitators. Wider collaboration between health, agriculture, schooling and rural advancement sectors supported these community initiatives. Lessons from profitable tasks like this are related nowadays.

As well a lot of approach discussions start off by asking how we expand the intervention. Instead, the starting stage must be a vision of what good results seems to be like, and what constitutes influence. Attaining that vision may possibly call for various routes. In an influential paper in 2000 Peter Uvin delineated 4 important pathways to attain large-scale effect (in this case of NGO activities):

a) Quantitative ( or ‘scaling out’) in which the coverage of an intervention increases.

b) Practical, in which horizontal (cross-sectoral) or vertical (national to local) linkages are created.

c) Organisational, in which capacities of organisations are strengthened.

d) Political, which reflects a move towards progressive empowerment of communities to make demands and national leaders’ becoming held accountable for public action.

Due to its multi-sectoral nature, most of these pathways will want to be pursued to achieve wider influence on nutrition.

We now know that ten nutrition-certain interventions reaching 90% coverage in 34 higher burden nations will avert 20% of the international burden of stunting. We also know there is huge likely for improving the nutrition sensitivity in agriculture, well being, social protection, water and sanitation sectors – even though we require much more and greater evaluations. And we have already witnessed political progress in making a greater surroundings for nutrition.

But there are no simple solutions. With a new set of global growth ambitions on the horizon, we ought to look back on this 12 months as the watershed for nutrition – when the grand words and pledges of past high-degree summits get turned into massive-scale action, millions of youngsters get healthier fulfilling lives.

Stuart Gillespie is a senior study fellow with the Worldwide Meals Policy Research Institute and chief executive of the Transform Nutrition consortium. Comply with @TN_NutritionRPC on Twitter

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2014: the 12 months we defeat child hunger?