Russians Hunger While Food Is Wasted

Due to Russia's President Putin enforcing the destruction of banned products originating from Europe and the US, 350 tons of food were burned and squished, so no one could use it.

Imagine 350 tons of food.  That is 700,000 pounds of sustenance.  One (hungry) person's average meal weighs about 1.5 pounds.  So, 350 tons of food would roughly equate to 466,666 meals.

 Photo: (Handout)

  

These facts become rather sobering when combined with the additional fact of 22.9 million people living in poverty in Russia.   Alleviating poverty is a serious issue for the administration of President Vladimir Putin, but helping the impoverished eat is apparently not as important as upholding bans on European and US goods.  Those bans were made in retaliation to European and US government sanctions against Russia last year because of Russia's actions regarding Crimia and Ukraine.  So, because our government and their government disagree, almost half a million impoverished Russians lost out on a good meal.  It is sad.  The companies that brought the food in would have been just as punished if they had to hand the 'contraband' over to the food banks without making a profit, rather than the food being publicly destroyed.  And the bans would have been seen to be in effect, allowing the government to continue to thumb its nose at Western sanctions.  But, in this myopic and destructive world, everyone gets to lose.

On a side note, I just hope all the people that were incensed by the obvious waste of those 350 tons of food by Russian government don't look too closely at how US and European countries waste food.  Some statistics have consumers in North America (and Europe) wasting about 209 to 253 pounds of food per person every year.  With the US population of 318 million or so, that would mean about 110,210 tons of food are wasted every day in the US.  Even though it isn't as blatant and punitive as Russia's destruction of 'contraband' food stuffs, waste is waste, and we should all be getting upset by it.  Here is hoping the governments of all the world's countries start worrying about saving food instead of saving face.