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…

Plastic is everywhere. There are a million ways that plastic is good for humanity; there are also a lot of ways it’s bad for humanity (and the environment).

Plastic is not easily recycled; at least not all of it. For instance, how do you recycle a computer? What is it, number 1 or number 10? There is a lot of plastic in a computer, and there is a lot of metal mixed with it. It’s not a good idea to just dump this kind of stuff, but that’s what we’re doing for the most part.

Plastic is in your food. Several studies have shown that some chemicals leach into bottled water. You can taste it, so there must be something to it. What about microwaves? Microwaving certain types of plastic can lead to leaching into the food as well, or so I’ve heard. Plus, microwaving things like spaghetti in a plastic container pretty much ruins the container.

For food, we should try to use reusable containers. In cases when we can’t use reusable containers, we should try to use recyclable containers as best we can.

For me, I have found that Pyrex makes a really nice glass container set with plastic lids (which you remove before microwaving, and which don’t touch the food typically). These containers are very nice, easy to wash, easy to stack, and reusable until you break them.

Glass, unlike plastic, does not biodegrade. ( Edit: I meant to say glass doesn’t degrade. Plastic does degrade which is bad, but it doesn’t biodegrade; it simply breaks down chemically, especially when exposed to UV light. ) Therefore, it is less harmful to the environment, in my opinion. Another thing about glass is that it’s recyclable. No questions asked. Finally, it is not directly derived from petroleum products; therefore it is probably more of a renewable resource than plastic.

Let’s not forget that metals are usually recycleable and reusable.