Food. When you hear the word food what comes into your mind?

Maybe a burger, fries, and a

can of coke from your local fast food. Maybe your mom’s home cooking comes into mind? But
did the thought of hungry children even crossed your mind? Probably not, because when we
hear the word “food” our mind goes directly to the thought of eating, and all other things are
disregarded.
The Food we have is enough for the whole population of the planet but food waste and poverty
make this enough food “inadequate”. A person is lucky if he can eat 3 times a day, a person
who eats anytime he wants is luckier, but a person who eats how many he wants and throws
away his leftovers is the luckiest in the eyes of the hungry. According to the research by FAO
(Food and Agriculture Organization) about 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted every year. This
amount of food wasted is enough to feed the hungry 925 million people in the world. An average
person eats 3 - 4 pounds of food per day and wastes 1 pound. If you multiply it by the whole
year, we can conclude that the average person eats 1,460 pounds of food per year and wastes
365 pounds of food per year.

World Hunger is real, in fact, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), over 820 million people are still hungry in 2019. Poor people have made
alternatives to battle this hunger. In the Philippines, where over 2.3 million families are hungry
and 26 million people are poor, people have resorted to a way of recycling food waste and even
making a business out of it. Pagpag is recycled leftover meat from the dumpster that’s picked up
by the “Pagpag vendors” who then sells it for a cheap price to the “Pagpag buyers”. The buyers
then proceed to wash the meat and prepare their kitchen for cooking the “pagpag”. They cook
the “pagpag” just like normal meat, they fry it, make adobo with it, cook afritada, and almost
every dish that meat is needed. “Pagpag” is a hit to the poor settlers of Manila, it has become
their “staple food” and since it’s meat, everybody enjoys it. In an interview with a vendor, he
described pagpag as “the food of the rich at an affordable price”. Hunger is so prominent that
people have developed ways to satisfy their hunger. Haiti, a country with 80% of its people living
below the poverty line, have a delicacy that will make you think twice about wasting food. “Mud
cookies” yes you heard it right, mud cookies are a staple food for the people in Haiti. They are
forced to eat these cookies made out of the mud because they have no alternatives. Haiti is one
of the poorest countries in the world. They make these cookies by digging dirt, placing them in a
bowl, adding water, butter, and salt, even sugar is scarce in Haiti. They place it at heat around
180 degrees for 20 minutes. This cookie has no nutritional value and can cause diseases. Haiti
has serious mortality issues surrounding respiratory infections, diarrhea, and tuberculosis, and
eating dirt cannot help with these.

Clearly, the world is hungry and people who go to bed on an empty stomach are abundant.
Aren’t there any solutions to this problem? There is, and it’s pretty simple. I ask you again, why
is the food not enough when it is meant to be enough? It’s because of the leftovers, the food
wasted by the rich and desired by the poor. It is common knowledge that to battle hunger we
must make more food but more food means more to waste. If all of the people stopped wasting
food we can end world hunger in 3 to 5 years. This is because limiting food waste will reduce
the need of producing more food by 60%. Food is enough if all of us stop wasting food. I
encourage you all to reduce food waste please put forth your greatest effort. Mass participation
is needed for these to work. Food waste reduction is needed and not anything else.

To sum up my speech, Food is a treasure that some of us take for granted. Poverty has made
people do a lot of things to have something to eat.
World Hunger is real and everybody must take part in reducing Food waste, the main cause of
hunger. I bid you all goodbye but I’ll leave you with these words “ Your leftovers, are a full
course meal for someone, please stop wasting your Food.