If you ever needed proof of what a mad mad world we live in, you only had to watch last night’s BBC news bulletin on TV.
The top story concerned the present crisis in Ethiopia and the plight of the thousands who are likely to die of malnutrition over the coming months, due mainly to crop failures following two years of drought.
A few stories further down the running order came the news that up to 500,000 British kids are likely to suffer from liver disease in the foreseeable future, caused by their obesity and lack of exercise.
The latter group do not have a bad diet from circumstance but from their own choices and those of their parents.
The UK government has announced it will send £38m, in aid, to help alleviate the current problems in Africa, but I wonder how much more the impending obesity crisis, here at home, is likely to cost us.
The final piece of madness is that while many in Africa are starving, much of the food that is grown there, is exported to supermarkets in the already overfed countries of Europe and the US - what the supermarkets can’t sell, is thrown out and wasted.
It seems, therefore, highly probable, that we are killing the planet by importing our food from such a distance; we are killing our own children by NOT feeding them the very food we have imported, and we are arguably killing the African people by throwing away what COULD be feeding them.
What further proof do you need?….. It really is a mad mad world!!
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