Feed me?

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

I haven’t been eating very well. I pretty much live off of the Frwy Coffeehouse grilled cheese sandwiches and Union Market bagels. It's my own fault though, a combination between laziness, a busy lifestyle and poor cooking skills.
I was feeling inspired to take better care of myself today when I remembered a conversation I had awhile ago with one of the girls that lives in my house. She’s quite a nice girl and was telling me all about her recent purchase. A membership to a weight loss centre to aid her goal to get in shape and feel better about herself. This membership was not free, and came at quite the price. Many hundreds of dollars were spent to help her eat healthy and to inspire motivation to exercise. I’m really proud of her for having the self discipline to eat healthy. It’s expensive and difficult when all you’re craving is ice cream (and she informed me that ice cream has way too many points!)
I know I’d have a hard time dieting.
But this got me thinking…not to get picky, but it’s amazing to me that our North American culture spends so much money on exercise, dieting and weight loss, while half the world is starving. I know I am not an ideal body weight, Erin and I always joke about our extra little wobbly chub, but I know I’m not fat. It’s easy to think that though in the culture we live in. Thin is in and many of us suffer the consequences.
However, today I didn’t start to rant about the media, worry about anorexia or even wish I was skinnier secretly in my head. Today I was struck with a realization that half the world is starving themselves while the other half is starving. What a confusing world we live in today. So many campaigns to alleviate world hunger, while at the same time we’re spending millions to get thin.
In 1996 the World Food Summit set a goal to potentially eradicate world hunger by 2015. According to their statistics, currently 852 million people are chronically undernourished. EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY TWO MILLION PEOPLE. An even more staggering fact is that one BILLION people in this world are living on less than one dollar per day! This is unacceptable. If this global number doesn’t make you cringe, here’s a more local example. In Canada, in 2/3’s of single parent homes, the parent reports not eating in order to have enough food to last the entire week. That’s almost 70% of single parent households that don’t have enough to eat on a weekly basis. Food is a luxury to these people. A luxury! I think of the definition of luxury and somehow a visual of bread doesn’t immediately surface.
I ache inside that my desire is to lose five pounds while people around the world are praying for their next meal. How as a culture can we be so selfish, sit back and do nothing as people go to sleep hungry? Food is a basic human need. All people should have access to this ‘luxury’ whether rich or poor. Food is a right, and this is something that is non-negotiable.

posted by Rachel Pede @ 11:29 AM   0 comments