Food and #Inequality

My post for Blog Action Day is about food #inequality.

I've chosen this aspect of inequality because #Blogaction14 coincides with World Food Day. 

Does inequality in access to food matter?

Yes it does if you believe that every human life is valuable.

Yes it does because freedom from hunger is a basic human right. Survival depends on it.

It cannot be right that, while obesity is a growing problem for many and one third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted every year, 1 in 9 of the world's people live with chronic hunger. 

One of the Millennium Declaration targets in 2000 was to halve the number of people who suffer hunger by 2015.

Some progress has been made but there is still a long way to go.

It is the least powerful who suffer disproportionately:

• 60% of hungry people are women

• every year 5 million children under 5 die of malnutrition-related causes

• 4 in 10 children in poor countries have bodies and brains damaged through malnourishment

Why is it important to reduce inequality in access to food and the means to buy and produce it?

• people are suffering

• there is a huge cost to global economy when large numbers of people are less productive because of sickness and other difficulties caused by malnutrition

• global security is threatened because hungry people become desperate 

• hunger can happen to anyone, including within affluent countries like the UK

So, over to you, what action could you take or encourage others to take to reduce food inequality?

This post is part of the global Blog Action Day 2014 on inequality. 

Image Credit: Wikipedia