Living the ‘fast’ life

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/10/2010 (5831 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Food was in the news last month, starting with a mid-September report from the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization. The FAO had some good news: The number of chronically undernourished people in the world has fallen — down 9.6 per cent from 1.023 billion in 2009 to 925 million today.

But don’t start celebrating just yet. Although the number of hungry people fell over the last 12 months, there are still more people without food today than 20 years ago when that figure stood at 827 million.

We won a battle, in other words, but we’re still losing the hunger war.

Ten days later, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released a report noting that — there’s really no way to say this politely — we who live in the world’s richest countries have turned into a bunch of fatties.

According to the OCED, the obesity epidemic in places such as the U.S. and Canada has become “one of the largest public health emergencies of our time.”

The report went on to say that the U.S. is the “fattest country” in the OECD, with 68 per cent of Americans overweight. This might tempt Canadians to smirk behind their morning double-double and doughnut, but we shouldn’t be so smug; 60 per cent of people in this country could afford to lose a few kilograms, too.

All told, there are over an estimated one billion overweight adults in the world today, with at least 300 million of them obese.

What’s striking about the two reports is how both the number of hungry people, and the number of overweight people, keeps going up. Over the past 20 or so years, almost 100 million people have been added to the list of those who are chronically malnourished. In about the same timeframe, obesity rates have doubled and even tripled in some wealthy countries. The OECD says that more than 50 per cent of the population in almost half of the world’s 33 richest countries is now classified as overweight.

The result for both groups is the same: health problems — half because they don’t have enough to eat, and the rest because they eat too much.

All this makes me wonder: Is there a way for those of us who have more than enough to eat to share with those who don’t have enough? Maybe those of us who live in the fat part of the world — when you consider the avoidable adverse health affects of being overweight, calling us “developed” might be a misnomer — could go on diets to help the hungry. By buying and eating less food, we would not only lose weight; we could also save money to donate to groups that feed hungry people.

People of faith could lead the way. When it comes to eating less, we have a lot of experience. It’s called fasting.

Almost every religion has a tradition of fasting. Baha’is fast for 19 days from sunrise to sunset, during Ala, the 19th month of the Baha’í year. All the main branches of Buddhism promote periods of fasting, usually on full-moon days and other holidays. Christians have a long and rich tradition of fasting, including the example of Jesus himself.

Hindu fasts are commonly practised on New Moon days and during festivals such as Shivaratri, Saraswati Puja and Durga Puja. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the best-known Jewish fast day, but there are six other fast days on the Jewish calendar as well. Muslims fast during Ramadan.

For people of faith, fasting is more than just going without food. The goal is self-transformation and to draw closer to God. And what better way to become transformed than by thinking about the needs of others? Feeling hunger, even if just for a few hours, is also a great way to develop empathy for those who are truly hungry.

A good day to try fasting is World Food Day, Oct. 16. That’s the day created by the United Nations to encourage people around the world to learn more about the plight of hungry people. Coming, as it does, after Thanksgiving — a day when we tend to eat too much — it’s a perfect time to start getting back to pre-holiday shape, and help people who don’t have enough to eat (www.fao.org/getinvolved/en/).

You could also sign the online petition at the UN’s One Billion Hungry project (www.1billionhungry.org). The petition, which calls on the world’s governments to end hunger, has been signed by almost 900,000 people so far, including about 3,200 Canadians. (Nepal is leading the way, with 134,000 signatures.)

Resources for World Food Day are also available from the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, which sponsors Fast for Change, an effort to raise awareness about hunger issues, and raise money to end hunger around the world (www.fastforchange.ca).

There’s a saying attributed to the Zulu tribe, South Africa’s largest ethnic group, that goes like this: “The continually stuffed body cannot see secret things.”

Or maybe big, obvious, glaring things such as world hunger, too.

jdl562000@yahoo.com

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