SemiAntics

I’ve been saying for a long time that there is enough food to go around. I mean, enough to go around the entire world. Today I heard someone say that 1 billion people are starving and 1 billion people are obese. Those numbers are just getting larger each year.

It seems obvious that the obese people should eat less and that would leave more food for the starving people, but it’s not that simple apparently. I suspect the real issue is politics, as usual. I have heard that the USDA won’t let people sell food if it doesn’t meet specifications. For example, I heard on NPR a few years ago that millions of bushels of peaches were being dumped because they were too small to sell, but otherwise perfectly fine. Do you think starving people care how big peaches are?

One solution to world hunger is to have starving people eat obese people. I bet that will go over like a lead weight.

A factor that is doing nothing but exacerbating the problem is the government subsidies on corn and the like for ethanol for fuel. Using corn for fuel is nothing short of criminal, and those who proposed it had to be fully aware of the consequences, so they are also criminals in my opinion.

Bearing in mind that there is sufficient food, I still eat carefully and don’t waste anything if I can help it. It doesn’t matter that what I throw out will never be useful for others, but the less I eat, buy, and waste, the less it costs for poor people to eat, or so I theorize. In any event, it makes me feel more efficient and better about myself. Just like recycling, and conserving energy when I can. It also makes my bank account feel happy!

Then, there’s always writing your senator, too…