Tag: food

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Business

UN says the worldwide meals disaster is about affordability, not availability

UN says the global food crisis is about affordability, not availability

Food prices remain stubbornly high as Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on, exacerbating existing pressure from supply chain disruptions and climate change.

The war has “put a lot of fuel on an already burning fire,” said Arif Husain, chief economist at the United Nations World Food Programme.

Ukraine is a major producer of commodities such as wheat, corn and sunflower oil. Although exports globally have been restricted due to Russia’s invasion, Husain said that the global food crisis is not driven by the availability of food, but surging prices.

“This crisis is about affordability, meaning there is food available, but the prices are really high” he said on CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Monday.

According to figures from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, global food prices in July were 13% higher than a year ago. And prices could keep rising. In its worst-case scenario, the UN estimates global food prices could jump another 8.5% by 2027.

Fertilizer prices are also rising, contributing to higher food prices as costs are passed onto consumers. Prices jumped after Russia — which accounts for around 14% of global fertilizer exports — limited exports. That in turn has dented crop yields.

That, combined with high energy prices and supply chain disruptions, will affect the World Bank’s ability to respond to the increase in food production over the next two years, said Mari Pangestu, managing director of development policy and partnerships at the World Bank. All that uncertainty could keep prices high beyond 2024, she said.

While the UN’s Husain argued the current crisis mostly stems from high prices and affordability issues, he said it could turn into a food availability crisis if the fertilizer crunch is not resolved.

The UN estimates the number of people in “hunger emergencies,” which it defines as one step away from famine, has jumped from 135 million in 2019 to 345 million, Husain said.

Heat wave in China

Extreme weather and climate change are also exacerbating conditions contributing to global food insecurity. China, the world’s biggest wheat producer, has suffered multiple weather disruptions, from flash floods to severe droughts.

Earlier this month, the country issued its first drought emergency as central and southern provinces suffered weeks of extreme heat, with temperatures in dozens of cities exceeding 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat wave has hindered crop production and jeopardized livestock.

“Rice production is certainly very vulnerable to changes in weather temperature,” said Bruno Carrasco, director general of the sustainable development and climate change department at the Asian Development Bank. “When we look at the overall supply of food production in Asia-Pacific, approximately 60% of that is rain-fed farming.”

“We are very concerned given the overall weather events that we’ve seen and observed over the course of the year,” he added.

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Health

What You Don’t Know About Meals Allergic reactions

What You Don’t Know About Food Allergies

The prevalence of severe food allergies ranges from 10 percent in 2-year-olds and 7.1 percent in children between 14 and 17 to 10.8 percent in adults aged 18 and over. Although milk, egg, wheat, and soy allergies are often overcome in infants and toddlers, others in the Big 9 almost always persist for life. And whoever was allergy-free as a teenager doesn’t necessarily have to stay that way. New food allergies can develop at any age.

According to Dr. Scott H. Safe, allergist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, and co-authors: “Remarkably, about half of US adults with food allergies report developing at least one of their food allergies in adulthood, the shellfish allergy being for most of these cases is responsible. “

The only real food allergies are adverse immunological reactions, explained Dr. Safer. The body reacts to an otherwise harmless food like a life-threatening infection and starts a large-scale offensive. Symptoms can include hives, difficulty breathing, vomiting, or anaphylaxis – a severe, potentially fatal shock reaction that occurs within seconds or minutes of exposure to an allergen, sometimes in tiny amounts. For this reason, most airlines no longer offer passengers peanuts – simply spraying peanut dust can be fatal for some people with peanut allergies.

More than 40 percent of food allergic children and half of food allergic adults experience at least one severe reaction in their lifetime. Among those allergic to one or more of the Big 9 allergens, severe reaction rates exceed 27 percent, with peanut allergy topping the list at 59.2 percent in children and 67.8 percent in adults with peanut allergy.

However, many people who believe they have a food allergy don’t when tested with a blind oral provocation, which involves testing foods under medical supervision to see if a child is responding, the gold standard for diagnosing Food allergies. Others mistakenly view all kinds of food side effects – from upset stomach to headaches – as allergies. Food intolerances, for example to lactose, the natural sugar in milk, are not an immune reaction, but result from a deficiency in the enzyme lactase. Many Asians develop redness and redness when consuming alcohol because they lack an enzyme to digest it. Other people may think they are allergic because they are experiencing drug-like reactions, such as being extremely nervous from the caffeine in coffee and tea.

Sometimes long-term avoidance of a food can lead to an allergic reaction when that food is eventually consumed. This can happen to children with skin allergies who avoid milk; they may experience an allergic reaction later when they finally consume it. Occupational exposure, the use of skin care products, even tick bites can sometimes lead to food allergies in adulthood if both are cross-reactive with an allergenic substance.

And while allergy-prone families have historically been advised not to expose their children to peanuts until the age of 3 (advice that likely contributed to the current explosion in peanut allergies in children), it now appears that introducing it early – at 6 months – a highly allergenic food is actually protective and reduces the risk of a later reaction, said Dr. Safer.

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World News

North Korea’s meals state of affairs is ‘tense,’ Kim Jong Un says

North Korea's food situation is 'tense,' Kim Jong Un says

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un speaks in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on March 7, 2021, about the first short course for chief secretaries of city and county party committees in Pyongyang, North Korea.

KCNA | via Reuters

North Korea’s ruler Kim Jong Un has reportedly admitted that the food situation in the secret country is worrying amid reports of food shortages and inflated staple prices.

North Korea’s authoritarian leader said the food situation is now “strained” after the country’s agricultural sector “failed to meet its grain production schedule due to typhoon damage last year,” state media reported in Pyongyang.

Speaking at a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, Kim said, “Having a good harvest is a militant task that our party and our state must fulfill as the top priority in order to enable people to live stable lives and to successfully advance in building socialist construction “reported the Pyongyang Times.

Comments at the plenary session, which began on Tuesday and lasts all week, mark a rare admission of problems with the communist regime, which traditionally does not publicly admit problems in the country.

In North Korea there are no independent media in which state media serve as the mouthpiece of the regime. Instead, the media extol the virtues and wisdom of Kim Jong Un, the “Supreme Leader” and the Kim Dynasty. All comments from Kim are carefully recorded and reported.

Kim’s comments come amid reports of rising food and staple food prices in North Korea amid the crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and typhoon in 2020. NK News (an independent North Korean news service not based in the country) has reported the price hike, with a source in the country reporting examples of shampoos for $ 200 a bottle and a kilogram of bananas for $ 45 a bottle.

North Korea has few allies in the world and has relied on China (its largest trading partner) for much of its imports, but the closing of its border with China during the pandemic has resulted in food and fuel shortages. North Korea’s agricultural sector has always been vulnerable to the typhoon season in the region and has experienced regular flooding in recent years.

Kim chaired the Labor Party’s plenary session this week, alluding to the economic troubles but insisting that things get better.

Kim said that “the conditions and environment for the revolutionary struggle have deteriorated since the beginning of this year, but the country’s economy as a whole has improved,” the state-run Pyongyang Times reported.

Kim put items on the Central Committee’s agenda, saying “to direct all efforts this year towards agriculture” and to deal with the “protracted nature” of the pandemic, to analyze the “current international situation” and “the issue of stabilization and improving people’s living standards ”. “And the party’s childcare policy is a top priority, state media said.

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World News

‘Resort Rwanda’ Dissident Denied Meals and Medication in Jail, Household Says

‘Hotel Rwanda’ Dissident Denied Food and Medicine in Prison, Family Says

NAIROBI, Kenya – Paul Rusesabagina, the prominent dissident who was portrayed in the Oscar-nominated film Hotel Rwanda, is denied food and medicine in a prison in Rwanda where his family claims he is being held for terrorism, lawyers and Foundation, the 66-year-old also complained about poor health.

Mr. Rusesabagina told his family members that the prison officials had informed him that they would block his access to food, water and medicine from Saturday.

His family and lawyers believe the Rwandan authorities’ move was an attempt to pressure him to return to his trial, which he stopped attending in March after saying he was not expecting justice. Mr Rusesabagina, the former hotelier whose efforts to save more than 1200 people during the country’s genocide were depicted in Hotel Rwanda, later became a critic of President Paul Kagame’s government.

The Rwanda correctional facility tweeted later on Saturday that it was treating all inmates “equally” and that Mr Rusesabagina had access to meals and a doctor.

Rusesabagina’s lawyers were due to visit him on Friday but were refused entry to the prison, said senior attorney Kate Gibson. Gibson called the recent developments “worrying” and said the legal team had filed an “urgent filing” with the UN Task Force on Arbitrary Detention to request an investigation into Mr. Rusesabagina’s situation.

“It is hard to imagine direct and willful harm being done to an inmate, especially if they are in poor health,” Gibson told the New York Times.

Mr Rusesabagina was arrested last August and charged with nine criminal offenses, including murder and formation of an armed group accused of carrying out deadly attacks in Rwanda. A Belgian citizen and permanent resident of the United States, he had traveled from his home in San Antonio, Texas to join Constantin Niyomwungere, a pastor he says he invited to his churches in Burundi, neighboring Rwanda would have.

Little did Mr. Rusesabagina know that Mr. Niyomwungere was working as an agent for the Rwandan government and was part of a plan to lure him into the country. After meeting in Dubai, the two boarded a private jet that Mr Rusesabagina thought would fly to Burundi – only to land in Kigali on August 28, where he was unceremoniously arrested.

Rwanda authorities have announced that Mr Rusesabagina is traveling to Burundi to meet rebel groups based there and in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In the days before he was introduced to the press on August 31, Mr. Rusesabagina was hand and foot cuffed, unable to breathe properly or use the toilet, and was held in what he called the “slaughterhouse” where he did the Screams were heard from other inmates, according to an affidavit from one of his Rwandan lawyers, Jean-Félix Rudakemwa.

Murangira B. Thierry, a spokesman for the Rwanda Investigation Bureau, denied the allegations in the affidavit. The office, he said, “is a professional investigative agency that respects human rights.”

Mr Rusesabagina’s lawyers say that not only have they been banned from visiting, but they must first submit to the authorities any documents they wish to share with him. Previously, any notes the attorneys made when they met him had to be reviewed by prison officials before they could be released from prison, Ms. Gibson said.

“Access to lawyers of his choice, to the files against him, to the time and resources to prepare a defense has been denied,” said Ms. Gibson. “The trial of Mr. Rusesabagina has systematically violated his rights as a defendant, to the point that he has decided not to take part anymore. “

Mr. Rusesabagina’s family and lawyers say that his health has deteriorated since he was arrested and that he feared dying from a stroke.

“Of particular concern is the fact that the doctor provided by the Rwandan government has prescribed three bottles of water a day and he doesn’t get them,” said Kitty Kurth, spokeswoman for his foundation, in a statement on Friday.

Mr. Rusesabagina is a cancer survivor, has cardiovascular problems and complains of severe back pain.

“My family is very scared and concerned,” said Mr. Rusesabagina’s daughter, Anaise Kanimba, on Saturday. “We don’t know if his health can take it. We don’t know when to speak to him next time. That is devastating. “

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Politics

Stimulus checks decreased meals shortages, monetary hardship by over 40%

Stimulus checks reduced food shortages, financial hardship by over 40%

A young child watches as local residents receive food items as Food Bank For New York City teams up with the New York Yankees to kick-off monthly food distribution for New Yorkers in need at Yankee Stadium on May 20, 2021 in New York City.

Michael Loccisano | Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The two rounds of economic stimulus checks distributed over the past six months appear to have dramatically reduced financial hardship among American households, according to a new analysis of Census Bureau data from researchers at the University of Michigan.

Between December and April, the Census’ Household Pulse Survey showed that the rate of food shortages fell by more than 40%. During that same period, financial instability dropped by 45%, and anxiety and depression fell by 20%.

According to the Pulse data, the sharpest improvements in food security and financial stability occurred in the weeks immediately after two relief bills were signed into law and the IRS began sending Economic Impact Payments to individual bank accounts.

As part of a Covid-19 relief bill, the federal government distributed $600 to nearly every American adult starting in December of last year. A second bill, the American Rescue Plan Act, was passed in March with another round of checks, this time for $1,400.

Two groups in particular experienced the greatest overall decline in hardship over the first four months of this year: Adults living with children and households making less than $25,000.

A resident sorts her free groceries as others wait in line at the food pantry of the Fourth Presbyterian Church amid the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., April 27, 2021.

Brian Snyder | Reuters

The study’s authors, H. Luke Shaefer and Patrick Cooney of the University of Michigan’s Poverty Solutions initiative, acknowledge that the economy improved over this time, likely helping to decrease overall hardship.

But they argue that with unemployment still sitting above 6% in April, the economic recovery alone is not enough to explain the dramatic increase in food security, financial stability and mental health that coincided with the stimulus payments.

Studies like this one are part of a growing body of research that suggests the direct cash transfers may have helped to insulate American families, and the U.S. economy overall, from the worst of the pandemic.

The no-strings-attached payments have also proven extremely popular with voters, including with Republicans. A March survey found that 79% of all voters supported the $1,400 stimulus checks; 70% supported a $300 per week enhanced federal unemployment benefit, and 69% supported an expanded child tax credit.

Starting in July, the child tax credit will be distributed in the form of a monthly cash payment to families with children: $300 for each child under 6 years old, and $250 for each child 6-17 through the end of the year.

These checks alone will lift an estimated 10 million American children above the poverty line or closer to it, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Critics say the payments distributed too much money to people who didn’t really need it, and that they lacked any oversight of how the dollars were being spent. The overall cost to taxpayers of the stimulus checks was around $391 billion.

But given the popularity of the stimulus payments, and the growing evidence of their impact on people’s lives, it is little wonder that the White House is eager to draw attention to them.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the state of the U.S. economy and the need to pass coronavirus disease (COVID-19) aid legislation as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen listens in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 5, 2021.

Kevin Lemarque | Reuters

“President Biden’s economic plan is working and reducing hardships,” read the subject line of an email from the White House press office to reporters Wednesday, touting the results of Shaefer and Cooney’s analysis.

“Benefits from the American Rescue Plan — one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in recent history — had transformational effects,” it said.

For Democrats, there’s a lot riding on whether the public ultimately views Biden’s stimulus bill as a success.

Congressional midterm elections are less than 18 months away, and historical trends lean in favor of Republicans retaking the House and the Senate.

Democrats are also relying on the $1.9 trillion relief bill to help them sell the American public on Biden’s signature domestic investment plans: the $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan and the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan.

Some of the monthly cash transfers introduced in the relief bill also appear in the domestic spending package. For example, the American Families Plan proposes making the expanded child tax credit permanent.

A permanent, refundable child tax credit could reduce the overall child poverty rate in America by about 40%, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates.

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Business

How Meals Vans Endured and Succeeded Throughout the Pandemic

How Food Trucks Endured and Succeeded During the Pandemic

This article is part of Owning the Future, a series on how small businesses across the country have been affected by the pandemic.

The Covid pandemic hit California hard. It has seen well over 3.5 million cases and over 60,000 deaths. Scores of businesses have closed. But for Ana Jimenez, the owner of Tacos El Jerry, a small fleet of food trucks in Santa Cruz County, it provided an opportunity to bring her business into the 21st century.

Ms. Jimenez’s four trucks began taking orders through an app and a website, delivering directly to customers, and cultivating a customer base through a new social media presence. All of that added up to a significant increase in sales.

“Our business grew,” said Ms. Jimenez, 50. “We even added a new truck. Credit goes to my son, Jerry, who is 23. We didn’t have anything on social media. He said, ‘we’re going digital on all of this, Mom.’” Half of her orders are now placed online, she said.

Ms. Jimenez’s son created Facebook and Instagram pages for the food trucks and a social media advertising campaign, and the trucks began accepting credit card purchases. “Each truck is now serving around 300 people per day, which translates to roughly $5,000 in sales daily,” Ms. Jimenez said.

Food trucks — kitchens on wheels, essentially — are flexible by design and quickly became a substitute during the pandemic for customers who couldn’t dine indoors and coveted something different than their mainstream carryout options. That, in turn, has delivered a new client base to add on to an existing cadre of loyal followers. In a very real sense, food trucks are vehicles for equality in the post-pandemic world.

“While the pandemic has certainly hurt the majority of small businesses, it has also pushed many to be more innovative by looking for new revenue streams and ways to reach customers,” said Kimberly A. Eddleston, a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Northeastern University.

Like Ms. Jimenez, some businesses have “focused on ways to maintain their customer base by, for example, delivering products directly to customers,” Prof. Eddleston said. “While others have created products and services that attract new customers.”

Luke Cypher, 34, for instance, expanded the already eclectic selections at his Blue Sparrow food trucks in Pittsburgh, adding pizza, four-packs of local beer, gift cards and five-ounce bottles of housemade hot sauce.

Mr. Cypher’s main fare since he hit the streets in 2016 has been global street food. His menu carries a heavy Asian inspiration. There’s made-from-scratch kimchi on the menu daily. Dishes can include rice bowls, Vietnamese banh mi, falafel burritos, and a burger made with a ramen bun.

During the pandemic, Mr. Cypher’s business took a hit when 24 festivals and over a dozen weddings where he was booked were canceled. “I switched gears to keep things as lean as possible,” Mr. Cypher said.

He temporarily shut down a second food truck — a retrofitted 35-foot, 1956 Greyhound bus that he used for the big parties — and introduced a website to interact with his customers and an online ordering system for his smaller truck, which he usually parked at a neighborhood brewery.

“I switched the menu to focus on soups, noodles, burritos and pressed sandwiches, so that the things that we were handing our customers would make it home and still be a good experience after they opened up the bag and took it out,” he said.

Today in Business

Updated 

May 25, 2021, 12:48 p.m. ET

And he began to make and sell pizza one day a week at the kitchen where he used to do his prep work for the trucks before the pandemic. (The pizza, too, has an international flair: a banh mi pie, for example, made with pork or tofu, miso garlic sauce, mozzarella, pickled carrots, cucumbers, and cilantro.)

Customers can order and pay online or by phone and schedule a time to pick up; they receive a text or an email when their order is ready.

The kitchen “was already in place, so we turned around and said, well, what can we offer our customers in this unknown time that would be comforting,” Mr. Cypher said. “We had a wood-fired oven there that we use for bread baking, but basically it wasn’t being utilized.”

Before the pandemic, Mr. Cypher was serving roughly 1,500 customers a week from his food truck. A weekly festival on weekends, with 5,000 people stopping by the bus, of course, ramped up that number.

“The cool part is I was able to stay afloat because, unlike a restaurant with traditional seating, it was just myself, my sous-chef and his wife, who worked part-time,” he said. “We ended up serving roughly a hundred people a day, four or five days a week. So it wasn’t the numbers that we did before, but our lights were able to stay on because we had reduced a lot of costs that we had involved in running multiple rigs.”

Mr. Cypher, however, opted not to use delivery apps like Uber Eats or Grub Hub. “I don’t want to hand my food off to somebody else,” he said. “If we weren’t going to have the one-on-one conversations with our customers, we were at least going to give it to them directly.”

And like Tacos El Jerry, social media became a huge part of his marketing platform. “The pictures that we take and post on Instagram and Facebook let people feel like they’re a part of our truck family,” Mr. Cypher said.

“Food trucks were well-equipped to withstand pandemic restrictions, as they’re naturally to-go and socially distanced businesses,” said Luz Urrutia, chief executive of Accion Opportunity Fund, a nonprofit organization providing small-business owners with access to capital, networks and coaching. “Many food truck owners stepped forward to seize opportunity during a time of great uncertainty,” she said.

As Pittsburgh emerges from the pandemic, Mr. Cypher is adding a twist at his kitchen location. “We have licensing to offer beer on draft from our local breweries, so we’re going to have a small beer garden,” he said. “And that’s a revenue stream that we’re going to kind of lean into that we probably never would have done if not for Covid.”

In 2020, Mr. Cypher’s food trucks had $200,000 in gross sales, down about 40 percent from the previous year, he said. “But with the new offerings, more efficiency and only running one rig, we were actually able to net enough to keep the business moving forward,” he said. “This year we’re already up about 30 percent from where we were at last year at this time.”

For Ronicca Whaley, the chef behind the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based truck Shiso Crispy, timing was much tricker: she opened her first truck in November 2019, just a few months before the pandemic. And yet Ms. Whaley, 35, who offers handmade gyozas, bao buns and their signature dish, dirty rice, now has two trucks because of a strategy of regularly parking in certain neighborhoods and offering discounted and free meals outside a nearby Ronald McDonald House. (She added the second truck in January.)

One challenge: “The internet here is shoddy. And cellphone service in different areas out here just doesn’t work,” she said. “During the height of the pandemic, I was consistently losing two or more transactions at my point of sale every shift.”

Luckily, she was offered a special initiative for small business owners by Verizon Business: a year of complimentary connectivity and a 5G iPhone, as well as tools such as the Clover Flex point of sale program for touchless transactions. “It has digitally transformed my business,” Ms. Whaley said.

She also signed on to an app, called Best Food Trucks, that allows customers near her to pre-order once they know her location for the day.

“The inextricably connected stories of food trucks and Covid are a perfect microcosm of the undeniable reality that women, immigrants and people of color, historically relegated to the edges of the economy, are actually the foundation upon which the next economy must be built,” said Nathalie Molina Niño, author of “Leapfrog: The New Revolution for Women Entrepreneurs.”

But the silver lining from the pandemic for some operators is more personal — including bringing families together. “I have a ton of wisdom about how to operate food trucks and cooking,” Ms. Jimenez said. “It’s the coming together of the generations that made the business stronger now and for the future.”

Categories
Health

How Meals Impacts Psychological Well being

How Food Affects Mental Health

The results were remarkable for several reasons. The diet benefited mental health even though the participants did not lose any weight. People also saved money by eating more nutritious foods, which shows that eating healthy can be economical. Prior to the study, participants spent an average of $ 138 per week on groceries. Those who switched to healthy eating cut their food bills to $ 112 per week.

The foods we recommend were relatively cheap and available in most grocery stores. These included canned beans and lentils, canned salmon, tuna and sardines, and frozen and conventional products, said Felice Jacka, the study’s lead author.

“Mental health is complex,” said Dr. Jacka, Director of the Food & Mood Center at Deakin University in Australia and President of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research. “Eating a salad won’t cure depression. But a lot can be done to lift your spirits and improve your sanity, and it can be as simple as increasing your intake of plants and healthy foods. “

A number of randomized trials have reported similar results. In a study of 150 adults with depression published last year, researchers found that people who followed a fish oil-fortified Mediterranean diet for three months had greater reductions in symptoms of depression, stress and depression after three months compared to a control group Had anxiety.

However, not every study has produced positive results. For example, a large, year-long study published in JAMA in 2019 found that a Mediterranean diet reduced anxiety, but didn’t prevent depression in a group of high-risk people. Taking supplements such as vitamin D, selenium, and omega-3 fatty acids had no effects on depression or anxiety.

Most mental health professionals have not followed dietary recommendations, partly because experts say more research is needed before they can prescribe a particular mental health diet. However, public health experts in countries around the world have begun encouraging people to adopt behaviors such as exercise, sound sleep, a heart-healthy diet, and avoiding smoking that can reduce inflammation and have benefits for the brain. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists issued guidelines for clinical practice urging doctors to consider diet, exercise, and smoking before starting any medication or psychotherapy.

Individual clinicians also include nutrition in their work with patients. Dr. Drew Ramsey, a psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor at Columbia University College for Physicians and Surgeons in New York, begins his sessions with new patients by taking their psychiatric history and then examining their diet. He asks what they eat, learns about their favorite foods, and finds out if foods he thinks are important for the gut-brain connection are missing in their diet, such as plants, seafood, and fermented foods.

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Business

‘I Have No Cash for Meals’: Among the many Younger, Starvation Is Rising

‘I Have No Money for Food’: Among the Young, Hunger Is Rising

PARIS – Amandine Chéreau rushed out of her cramped student apartment in the suburbs of Paris to catch a train for a one-hour ride into town. Her stomach growled with hunger, she said as she walked to a student-run grocery bank near the Bastille, where she joined a serpentine line with 500 young people waiting for leaflets.

Ms. Chéreau, 19, a college student, ran out of savings in September after the pandemic ended the babysitting and restaurant jobs she relied on. By October, she’d had one meal a day and said she’d lost 20 pounds.

“I have no money for food,” said Ms. Chéreau, whose father helps pay her tuition and rent but was unable to send after being fired from his 20-year job in August. “It’s terrifying,” she added as the students around her reached for vegetables, pasta, and milk. “And it all happens so quickly.”

As the second year of the pandemic begins, humanitarian organizations across Europe are warning of an alarming rise in food insecurity among young people after their families have experienced constant campus closures, downsizing and layoffs. A growing proportion face hunger and increasing financial and psychological stress, which exacerbates the differences for the most vulnerable population groups.

Food aid dependency is growing in Europe as hundreds of millions of people around the world face a worsening crisis in how to meet their basic food needs. As the global economy struggles to recover from the worst recession since World War II, hunger is rising.

In the United States, almost one in eight households does not have enough to eat. People in countries where there is already a lack of food are facing a major crisis. According to the United Nations World Food Program, food insecurity in developing countries is expected to almost double to 265 million people.

In France, Europe’s second largest economy, half of young adults have limited or unsafe access to food. Almost a quarter routinely skip at least one meal a day, according to the Cercle des Économistes, a French economic think tank that advises the government.

President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged a growing crisis after undergraduate and postgraduate students demonstrated in cities across France where higher education is considered a right and the state pays most of its costs. He announced a rapid relief plan that includes € 1 daily meals in university cafeterias, psychological support and a review of financial support for those facing “permanent and notable decline in family income”.

“Covid created a deep and serious social emergency that quickly got people into trouble,” said Julien Meimon, president of Linkee, a statewide food bank that has set up new services for students who cannot get enough food. “The students have become the new face of this precariousness,” he said.

Food insecurity among college students was not uncommon before the pandemic. However, the problem has worsened since European countries imposed national bans last spring to contain the coronavirus.

Aid organizations, which mainly fed refugees, the homeless and people below the poverty line, have realigned their operations to meet the growing demand among young people. At Restos du Coeur, one of France’s largest food banks with 1,900 branches, the number of young adults under 25 standing in line for meals has risen to almost 40 percent.

Over eight million people in France visited a food bank last year, compared to 5.5 million in 2019. Demand for food aid across Europe has increased by 30 percent, according to the European Food Banks Federation.

While the government subsidizes campus meals, it does not provide pantries. As the cost of nutrition becomes insurmountable for students with little or no income, university administrators have turned to relief groups to help fight hunger.

The pandemic has eliminated jobs in restaurants, tourism and other hard-hit sectors that were once easily accessible to young people. According to the National Observatory of Student Life, two-thirds lost the jobs that helped them make ends meet.

“We have to work, but we can’t find jobs,” said Iverson Rozas, 23, a linguistics student at New Sorbonne University in Paris, whose part-time job was reduced to one five evenings a week in a restaurant and left with just 50 euros that you can spend on food every month.

Updated

March 16, 2021, 7:09 p.m. ET

One last day of the week, he stood in a row that spanned three blocks of town for the Linkee Food Bank near the French National Library, with students graduating in math, physics, law, philosophy, or biology.

“A lot of people here have never visited a food bank, but now they live hand-to-mouth,” Meimon said. Many thought such places were for poor people – not them, he added. To ease the feeling of stigma, Linkee tries to create a festive atmosphere with helpful volunteers and student bands.

Layoffs within a family deepen the domino effect. In France, where the average takeaway pay is 1,750 euros per month, the government has spent hundreds of billions of euros to limit mass layoffs and prevent bankruptcies. But that didn’t protect parents from the growing number of recessions.

This was the case with Ms. Chéreau, who studied history and archeology at the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne in the second year and whose family contributes around 500 euros a month to her expenses.

Shortly after she lost her student jobs, her father was plunged into unemployment when the company where he spent his career collapsed. Then her mother was put on paid leave and her income cut by over 20 percent.

When Ms. Chéreau ran out of savings, she went into debt. Then her pantry ran out of food, she almost stopped eating, and quickly lost weight.

She had heard from friends about the student food banks and now, she said, they are the only way she eats. Even so, she carefully rations what she gets and drinks water to combat hunger between her daily meals.

Class disturbed

Updated March 15, 2021

The latest on how the pandemic is changing education.

“It was hard at first,” Ms. Chéreau said, clutching a folder of homework she brought to work on while she stood on the food line. “But now I’m used to it.”

Mr Macron’s actions are welcome, but they can only help so much. In the northwestern city of Rennes, the € 1 dishes are so popular that they attract queues for over an hour. But some people have to take courses online and can’t wait that long. Others live too far away.

“A lot of people just go without food,” said Alan Guillemin, co-president of the student union at the University of Rennes.

The demand is so great that some enterprising students have started to address an urgent need.

Co’p1 / Solidarités Étudiantes, the grocery bank visited by Ms Chéreau, opened near the Bastille in October when six students from Paris’s Sorbonne University joined forces after more peers went hungry.

With the support of the Paris Mayor’s Office and the Red Cross, they negotiated donations from supermarkets and food companies like Danone. Now 250 volunteer students are organizing pasta, muesli, baguettes, milk, soda, vegetables and hygiene items to cater to 1,000 students a week – although the need is five times greater, said Ulysse Guttmann-Faure, law student and founder of the group. Students go online to reserve a place on the line.

“At first it took three days for these slots to fill up,” he said. “Now you are booked in three hours.”

Food banks like this one, run by volunteer students for other students, have become a rare ray of hope for thousands who have silently struggled to cope with the psychological stress of living with the pandemic.

Thomas Naves, 23, A Nanterre University scholarship student philosophy student said he felt abandoned and isolated after months of taking online classes in a tiny studio.

When his student jobs were cut, he looked for food banks that were set up on his campus twice a week. There he not only found much-needed meals, but also a way to escape loneliness and cope with his growing hardship. His parents were both sick and could barely make ends meet.

Mr. Naves sat down behind a small table in his student dormitory one afternoon to eat a microwave-cooled curry he’d gotten from the campus pantry. There was a small supply of donated pasta and canned food in his closet – enough to keep him going for a few more meals.

“Going to the food bank is the only way I can feed myself,” he said.

“But when I met other students in my situation, I realized that we all share this suffering together.”

Gaëlle Fournier contributed to the coverage.

Categories
Health

Democrats push FDA to manage poisonous metals in child meals

Democrats push FDA to regulate toxic metals in baby food

Democrats urge FDA to regulate toxic metals in baby food after research finds high levels.

Chris Tobin | DigitalVision | Getty Images

Top Democrats are urging the FDA to regulate toxic metals in baby formula after a Congressional investigation found metals like arsenic, lead, and cadmium to be found in far higher amounts than permitted in bottled water and other products.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. And Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill. As well as the representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill. And Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., Told CNBC that they are asking regulators to limit the levels of toxic heavy metals in baby food.

The Food and Drug Administration does not currently set limits for heavy metals in baby food, particularly for arsenic in rice grain. The agency regulates other toxins in consumer products such as lead, arsenic, and cadmium in bottled water.

The four Democrats said Thursday they had drafted laws that would tighten regulations on baby food safety and sent them to FDA staff for technical review. However, lawmakers want the FDA to use their existing regulator to take immediate action.

“Through our legislation and FDA regulations, we will ensure that the baby foods we put on the market are safe and that our children are safe,” Krishnamoorthi said in a statement. “I am proud to work with my colleagues, along with the FDA, stakeholders and health professionals across the country, to develop major reforms.”

An FDA spokeswoman said the agency takes exposure to toxic metals in food “extremely seriously” and that the agency is reviewing the results of the Congressional investigation. She added that “The FDA has not commented on whether it has received requests for technical assistance regarding the legislation, but we would look forward to working with Congress on the matter.”

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., During the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing titled Protecting the Timely Delivery of Mail, Medicines and Postal Ballots on Monday, Aug. 24, 2020, in the Rayburn House office building.

Tom Williams | CQ Appeal, Inc. | Getty Images

A subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, chaired by Krishnamoorthi, released the results of its 15-month investigation in February. It used data from four companies – Nurture, Hain Celestial Group, Beech-Nut Nutrition, and Gerber, a unit of Nestle – that responded to the subcommittee’s requests for information on testing guidelines and test results for their products.

The research found that “baby food companies weren’t looking for parents and young children the way we all expected – instead they knowingly sold us tainted products,” said Krishnamoorthi.

Hain said at the time that the investigation “did not reflect our current practices,” adding that the company’s internal standards “meet or exceed current federal guidelines.”

Gemma Hart, a spokeswoman for Nurture, told the New York Times at the time that their products were safe and that the metals were only present in “trace amounts”. Beech-Nut said Thursday that the company is “committed to continuously improving its internal standards and testing processes as technology and knowledge evolve.” Dana Stambaugh, a spokeswoman for Gerber, said the company is taking steps to minimize metals in its products.

Three other baby food companies – Walmart, Sprout Organic Foods, and Campbell Soup – did not provide all of the information requested. At the time the investigation was published, Campbell said its products were safe and cited the lack of FDA standards for heavy metals in baby food.

A Walmart representative told Reuters at the time that private label product suppliers must meet their own specifications, “which for baby and toddler foods means the levels must meet or fall below the limits set by the FDA.”

Sprout did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

“Like parents across America, I was horrified to learn that trusted baby food brands knowingly sell products that are high in toxic lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium,” Rep. Cardenas said Thursday. “I urge the FDA to use their existing agencies to take immediate regulatory action.

The investigation found that heavy metals are naturally found in some grains and vegetables, but added that levels can be increased if manufacturers add other tainted ingredients to baby food. According to the report, companies rarely test their products for contamination before sending them to stores.

“It is unacceptable that, despite parents’ efforts to protect their children, some leading baby formula manufacturers have launched products that expose children to dangerous toxins,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “This legislation will protect children and ensure a healthy start by holding manufacturers accountable for removing toxins from infant and toddler foods.”

Categories
Business

Meals and its packaging are extremely unlikely to transmit virus

Food and its packaging are highly unlikely to transmit virus

A health worker wearing a protective mask works in a laboratory during clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine at the Research Centers of America in Hollywood, Florida, USA

Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images

It’s been just over a year in the global Covid-19 pandemic, and there is still “no credible evidence” that people can catch the virus from food or food packaging, leading US food and health officials said Thursday .

While there have been some scientific studies that have identified Covid-19 particles on food packaging, according to a joint press release from the United States, most of that research is to find the genetic fingerprint of the virus, not the live virus that is causing it Infection in humans can result from the Department of Agriculture, the United States Food and Drug Administration, and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Transmission of the virus through food or food packaging is highly unlikely because the amount of virus particles that a person could theoretically ingest by touching a contaminated surface is not enough to produce an infection through oral inhalation.

Health experts around the world have come to similar conclusions and have found that international scientists are constantly learning more about the virus.

“Despite the billions of meals and food packaging treated since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has so far been no evidence that food, food packaging, or handling of food is a source or an important route of transmission for SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19, “said a recent statement from the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Food.

Over 110 million people around the world have tested positive for the coronavirus. There are several ways to transmit and infect the virus, but global health experts agree that taking it out on Friday night is unlikely to be one of them.