2014: European Year against the waste of food

The project ARE WE WHAT WE EAT and other initiatives of the ASBL Intermundia are in the frame of the European Year Against the Waste of Food. The European Parliament has adopted a non-legislative resolution that called for action to halve food waste by 2025 and improve access to food by the needy. According to EU Commission figures, households, supermarkets and restaurants, along with the rest of the food supply chain, are currently wasting up to 50% of edible food. To combat such waste, which is occurring at all stages in the chain, MEPs have called on the commission to implement a coordinated strategy combining EU-wide and national measures to improve the efficiency of the food supply and consumption chains sector by sector - and to tackle food wastage as a matter of urgency. The resolution laid out areas which such a strategy would need to address. New awareness campaigns should be run at both EU and national levels to inform the public how to avoid wasting food. In addition the resolution called for Member States to introduce school and college courses explaining how to store, cook and dispose of food and also exchange best practices to this end. MEPs also called for 2014 to be designated as "European year against food waste". The EU27 currently wastes 89 million tonnes of food each year - equivalent to 179 kg per person. In an effort to tackle this still growing problem the resolution called for the adoption of dual-date labelling to show when food may be sold until (sell-by date) and until when it should be consumed by (use-by date). It was claimed that this would help to avoid situations in which retailers offer food too close to its expiry date - thus increasing the potential for wastage. Read more here During the youth exchange, the participants will share recipes and tips that can be used to avoid waste of food. Many of these recipes are part of the food cultures of the countries involved and this will be a nice instrument to reach two aims: - Reducing the waste of food, both during the youth exchange and in the future, when the participants will be back in their countries and in their associastions; - Promoting the knowledge of recipes of other countries. The preparation of these recipes will be one of the activities that will allow the participants to get in touch with other cultures.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission, by the Belgian national agency for the francophone area of the country Bureau International Jeunesse (BIJ). This publication (communication) reflects only the views of the author. The Commission and the BIJ cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

We are looking for participants! For more info, contact us!

PROJECT APPROVED! WE ARE LOOKING FOR PARTICIPANTS!!! From Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, France and Romania. Youth Exchange – Key Action 1 Erasmus+ "Are we what we eat? Learning – Discovering - Testing" 01-09 September 2014 Brussels, Belgium 100% food and lodgement covered by the project A forfeit reimbursement for the travel costs. Write to info@intermundia.be “Are we what we eat? Testing – Discovering - Learning” is a project for a youth initiative. The main topic will be intercultural learning and the fight against cultural prejudices through food and eating habits, including a reflection upon the connection between the way you eat and the health. Participants from different counties will identify the differences and the similarities among traditional food cultures of the countries involved. The activities will involve sharing one’s own food cultures with the others, getting to know the similarities and the differences of every country’s culture: through workshops and non-formal education activities the participants will discover more about the other countries, in order to eliminate the barriers and the prejudices among them. The participants will also be involved in workshop about reusing food, recycling and environmental activities. The food will be the instrument for this exchange of experiences. We also aim at involving the participants in the discovery of our local products, taking them on tours in the vicinity. Our idea is to rediscover the wholesome traditions, focusing on the use of local products also from an ecological point of view. The choice of these products has a close relation with the carbon's emissions: in fact, the energetic resources consumed are lower than the one used for the products that come from faraway places. We maintain that the use of local products, indeed, might be convenient due to the reduced consumption of energetic resources that it generates. This is the reason why the organization Slow Food Youth Network will actively collaborate in the project. Furthermore, participants will create a toolkit/book with recipes “healthy but traditional” written by all participants involved in the project, which will be uploaded on a web platform where the participants will be free to share contents also after the exchange, thus ensuring a follow-up of the experience. The project “Are we what we eat? Testing – Discovering - Learning” is a youth exchange involving 30 young people . The exchange will take place in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean from September 1st to September 9th (9 days). The project is funded with the support of the programme Erasmus+ (http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/index_en.htm)of the European Commission and of the Bureau International Jeunesse(http://www.lebij.be/), Belgian National Agency for Brussels and Wallonia of the programme Erasmus + - Jeunesse en Action.

Slow food and the Youth Network

Below, the description of our friend of Slow food and of SFYN (Slow Food Youth Network). 

What is Slow Food?

Slow Food is an international organization that stands at the crossroads of ecology, gastronomy, ethics and pleasure. The organization was founded in 1989 as a reaction against the upcoming fast food chains. It opposes the standardization of taste and the growth and unrestrained power of multinationals in the food industry.

Slow Food strives for high quality food, produced in a sustainable way … and, of course, food that tastes good! It is essential, not only for us, but also for the future of the earth to change the present food system. Slow Food promotes small-scale agriculture, protects biodiversity and fights food industry’s politics of endless growth.

Every two years Slow Food organizes a big meeting for a network of food communities and congress in Turin: Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre. People from all over the world who support a sustainable food system gather there to show their artisanal and local products and to exchange knowledge, experiences and ideas.

For more information about Slow Food and about its projects visit the website (www.slowfood.com).

What does SFYN do?

The SFYN unites groups of active young Slow Food members from all over the globe into one international network. The local groups independently create original and engaging events aimed at raising awareness about food issues and providing means to take action. SFYN promotes cooperation between the local groups, facilitates the exchange of knowledge and ideas, and campaigns internationally. Thus combining the powers of young food activists from all over the world!

What kind of events? Well, for example...

SchnippelDisko / DiscoSoupe

The only club where you are obliged to bring a knife! In the war against food waste, SFYN Germany gathered discarded vegetables and turned them into ‘protest- Suppe’ (protest Soup). The many clubbers ‘schnippled’ (cut) the vegetables to small pieces and made a lovely soup out of it! SchnippelDiscoSoupe is growing bigger and bigger: after Germany, the French picked it up and had already more than 20 DiscoSoupes. Greece followed and even Korea started 'schnippeling' vegetables to get attention for waste.

Eat-in

An eat-in is a gastro-political event that strengthens human relationships through sharing food and ideas. People come together and bring a dish that they made themselves according to the ideas of Slow Food.

Food Film Festival Amsterdam

An amazing three-day festival that looks at food from every perspective imaginable. Documentaries celebrating the love for food or highlighting problems in the food system, feature films wherein food plays a big role, but also debates, workshops, a top end restaurant and more. If you want to know more about the Food Film Festival, visit the website!

Are we what we eat? Testing - Discovering - Learning

“Are we what we eat? Testing – Discovering - Learning” is a project for a youth initiative. The main topic will be intercultural learning and the fight against cultural prejudices through food and eating habits, including a reflection upon the connection between the way you eat and the health. Participants from different counties will identify the differences and the similarities among traditional food cultures of the countries involved.
The activities will involve sharing one’s own food cultures with the others, getting to know the similarities and the differences of every country’s culture: through workshops and non-formal education activities the participants will discover more about the other countries, in order to eliminate the barriers and the prejudices among them. The participants will also be involved in workshop about reusing food, recycling and environmental activities.

The food will be the instrument for this exchange of experiences.
We also aim at involving the participants in the discovery of our local products, taking them on tours in the vicinity. Our idea is to rediscover the wholesome traditions, focusing on the use of local products also  from an ecological point of view. The choice of these products has a close relation with the carbon's emissions: in fact, the energetic resources consumed are lower than the one used for the products that come from faraway places. We maintain that the use of local products, indeed, might be convenient due to the reduced consumption of energetic resources that it generates. This is the reason why the organization Slow Food Youth Network will actively collaborate in the project. Furthermore, participants will create a toolkit/book  with recipes “healthy but traditional” written by all participants involved in the project, which will be uploaded on a web platform where the participants will be free to share contents also after the exchange, thus ensuring a follow-up of the experience.

Disco Soups Of The World Unite!

The article below is about the event organized by Slow food, the international movement that promotes as an alternative to "fast food", it strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and encourages farming of plants, seeds and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem. Disco Soups Of The World Unite! 11 Oct 13 October 16 was World Food Day, an event celebrated annually to mark the day that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was founded. Every year the event has an official theme - in 2013 it was Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition. With this in mind, different groups from the growing global movement against food waste decided to come together and use the day to draw attention to one of the food system’s biggest failures: In a world in which around 870 million people are still chronically undernourished, huge volumes of edible food continue to be thrown away every day. Food waste occurs at every stage of the food chain, but a significant amount occurs at source. Due to strict cosmetic requirements, reflecting the food industry’s idea of how fruit and vegetables should look, many products never leave the farm, for example over-sized melons, wonky carrots or curvy cucumbers. Luckily however, due to the growing number of organizations and campaigns working on the issue of food waste, awareness is growing and habits are changing. In recent months, one event in particular has captured the imagination of people around the world: Disco Soup. Disco Soup, with its roots in Slow Food Youth Network Deutschland (Schnippel Disko), sees people, young and old, come together in public places to chop vegetables sourced from local farms and markets that would otherwise have been wasted; often in huge quantities, always to music. Soups and salads are then prepared and distributed free to the general public. The events have been going from strength to strength with people around the world armed with chopping boards, peelers, pots, pans and disco beats showing that the best thing to do with food that would otherwise have gone to waste is to eat it! Recent highlights include New York, Amsterdam (Disco Soep), Nantes (Disco Soupe), and last week, during Slow Food’s AsiO Gusto, in Namyangju, South Korea (Yori Gamu). This World Food Day, for the first time, Slow Food Youth Network, Youth Food Movement Nederland, DAMn Food Waste, Disco Soupe, and Feeding the 5000, teamed up for an exciting collaboration to organize simultaneous events, in different cities for what became known as Disco Anti Food Waste Day! The collaboration was a huge success, with events organized in Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, Luxembourg, Macedonia and the Netherlands - reaching a wide audience, the media and even politicians. YFM Rotterdam took part in a record breaking event, cooking continuously for 38 hours, serving 800 people with food that would have gone to waste; while Slow Food Youth in Prague met with students to demonstrate how to easily cook a healthy and tasty meal on just one hob. Meanwhile in Mexico, the Slow Food Network was invited to celebrate World Food Day together with the FAO. In Brussels, Feeding the 5000 used the occasion to officially launch their international campaign against food waste. All in all a great day, and maybe the start of something much bigger...

Let's move for our health!

Obesity by the numbers Over the past three decades, childhood obesity rates in America have tripled, and today, nearly one in three children in America are overweight or obese. The numbers are even higher in African American and Hispanic communities, where nearly 40% of the children are overweight or obese. If we don't solve this problem, one third of all children born in 2000 or later will suffer from diabetes at some point in their lives. Many others will face chronic obesity-related health problems like heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, and asthma. How Did We Get Here? Thirty years ago, most people led lives that kept them at a healthy weight. Kids walked to and from school every day, ran around at recess, participated in gym class, and played for hours after school before dinner. Meals were home-cooked with reasonable portion sizes and there was always a vegetable on the plate. Eating fast food was rare and snacking between meals was an occasional treat Today, children experience a very different lifestyle. Walks to and from school have been replaced by car and bus rides. Gym class and after-school sports have been cut; afternoons are now spent with TV, video games, and the internet. Parents are busier than ever and families eat fewer home-cooked meals. Snacking between meals is now commonplace. Thirty years ago, kids ate just one snack a day, whereas now they are trending toward three snacks, resulting in an additional 200 calories a day. And one in five school-age children has up to six snacks a day. Portion sizes have also exploded- they are now two to five times bigger than they were in years past. Beverage portions have grown as well- in the mid-1970s, the average sugar-sweetened beverage was 13.6 ounces compared totoday, kids think nothing of drinking 20 ounces of sugar-sweetened beverages at a time. In total, we are now eating 31 percent more calories than we were forty years ago–including 56 percent more fats and oils and 14 percent more sugars and sweeteners. The average American now eats fifteen more pounds of sugar a year than in 1970. Eight to 18-year old adolescents spend an average of 7.5 hours a day using entertainment media, including, TV, computers, video games, cell phones and movies, and only one-third of high school students get the recommended levels of physical activity. Now that’s the bad news. The good news is that by making just a few lifestyle changes, we can help our children lead healthier lives–and we already have the tools we need to do it. We just need the will. Let’s Move! Let’s Move! is a comprehensive initiative, launched by the First Lady, dedicated to solving the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation, so that children born today will grow up healthier and able to pursue their dreams. Combining comprehensive strategies with common sense, Let's Move! is about putting children on the path to a healthy future during their earliest months and years. Giving parents helpful information and fostering environments that support healthy choices. Providing healthier foods in our schools. Ensuring that every family has access to healthy, affordable food. And, helping kids become more physically active. Everyone has a role to play in reducing childhood obesity, including parents, elected officials from all levels of government, schools, health care professionals, faith-based and community-based organizations, and private sector companies. Your involvement is key to ensuring a healthy future for our children. Eat Healthy Parents and caregivers play a key role in not only making healthy choices for children and teaching children to make healthy choices for themselves. But in today’s busy world, this isn’t always easy. So Let’s Move! offers parents and caregivers the tools, support and information they need to make healthier choices while instilling healthy eating habits in children that will last a lifetime. Nutrition Information The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, put forth by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), provide science-based advice for individuals over the age of two to promote health and reduce the risk of major chronic diseases. The current Dietary Guidelines, encourage most Americans to eat fewer calories, be more physically active, and make wiser food choices. MyPlate USDA's new food icon, MyPlate, serves as a quick visual reminder to all consumers to make healthy food choices when you choose your next meal, built off of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for all Americans. MyPlate can help prioritize food choices by reminding us to make half of our plate fruits and vegetables and shows us the other important food groups for a well-balanced meal: whole grains, lean proteins, and low fat dairy. MyPlate Recipes Finding healthier recipes to serve your family is easier than ever, now that five of America’s largest media companies have teamed up with Pinterest and the Partnership for a Healthier America on an effort to make it easier for their millions of online visitors to put nutritious meals on the table every day. Condé Nast, Hearst Magazines, Meredith, Food Network and Time, Inc. have identified thousands of nutritious recipes that meet the guidance that supports USDA’s MyPlate, and are labeling, compiling and promoting these recipes on their most popular cooking websites. Check out a new Pinterest page for thousands of recipes, a site that provides a one-stop-shop where parents, beginner home cooks and even the most experienced chefs can find and share healthier recipes.

Think, Eat, Save!

Please find below the info about the global campaign "Think Eat Save". For further details visit the webpage

A recent study has revealed that about one third of all food production world-wide gets lost or wasted in the food production and consumption systems, amounting to 1.3 billion tonnes. In industrialized nations, retailers and consumers discard around 300 million tonnes that is fit for consumption, around half of the total food squandered in these regions. This is more than the total net food production of Sub-Saharan Africa and would be sufficient to feed the estimated 900 million people hungry in the world. (FAO) What is food loss/waste all about? Technically speaking, food loss and waste refer to the decrease in mass (quantitative) or nutritional value (qualitative) of food - edible parts - throughout the supply chain that was intended for human consumption. Food that was originally meant for human consumption but for various reasons is removed from the human food chain is considered as food loss or waste, even if it is then directed to a non-food use (feed, bio-energy). Food Loss refers to food that gets spilled, spoilt or otherwise lost, or incurs reduction of quality and value during its process in the food supply chain before it reaches its final product stage. Food loss typically takes place at production, post-harvest, processing and distribution stages in the food supply chain. Food waste refers to food that completes the food supply chain up to a final product, of good quality and fit for consumption, but still doesn't get consumed because it is discarded, whether or not after it is left to spoil. Food waste typically (but not exclusively) takes place at retail and consumption stages in the food supply chain. What is the Food Waste Campaign all about? The down side: food waste is a massive global problem that has negative humanitarian, environmental and financial implications. The up side: with relative ease and a few simple changes to our habits, we can significantly shift this paradigm. Many regional campaigns have recently been launched, echoing to the challenge of food waste at the national level and in major sectors, including hotels, restaurants, supermarkets and households. Perhaps surprisingly, one-third of all unused food in developed countries is wasted by households. The Think.Eat.Save campaign of the Save Food Initiative, is a partnership between UNEP, FAO and Messe Düsseldorf, and in support of the UN Secretary-General’s Zero Hunger Challenge, which seeks to add its authority and voice to these efforts in order to galvanize widespread global, regional and national actions, catalyze more sectors of society to be aware and to act, including through exchange of inspiring ideas and projects between those players already involved and new ones that are likely to come on board. We offer the Think.Eat.Save website as a portal to showcase these ideas to provide a one-stop shop for news and resources, and to launch our call for everyone to take action on this global concern.

Love Food, hate waste

UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner told us “In a world of seven billion people, set to grow to nine billion by 2050, wasting food makes no sense – economically, environmentally and ethically. Aside from the cost implications, all the land, water, fertilizers and labour needed to grow that food is wasted – not to mention the generation of greenhouse gas emissions produced by food decomposing on landfill and the transport of food that is ultimately thrown away. To bring about the vision of a truly sustainable world, we need a transformation in the way we produce and consume our natural resources.” Simple actions by producers, manufacturers, retailers, the hospitality industry and consumers - all of us really - can dramatically cut the food lost or wasted each year. After all here in the UK the average UK family could save £700 per year, and the UK hospitality sector could save £2.5 billion per year by tackling food waste and the value of waste in the manufacture and retail of food and drink in the UK is £4.2bn. WRAP is working with industry to tackle this issue here in the UK and helping consumers through Love Food Hate Waste to take small steps which will make a big difference. The new Think.Eat.Save. Reduce Your Footprint campaign to reduce food waste around the world, so we can all work together to make a difference, was launched on the 22nd January in Geneva by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO); in partnership with WRAP and many other supporters. The campaign specifically targets food wasted by consumers, retailers and food manufacturers and the hospitality industry. Their premise is that we all need to THINK about and be mindful of our food consumption patterns, we all need to EAT, and we all need to SAVE food, especially in developed countries and among the middle classes of the developing ones. If we can ‘Reduce our Foodprint’, we can reduce humanity’s impact on our planet. For more information on the global campaign visit www.fao.org/save-food, to find out more about what WRAP's doing with industry go to www.wrap.org.uk/food or for ways to tackle your own food waste take a look around Love Food Hate Waste today. Together across the world, each of us taking small steps, we can really make a difference