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Is the keto diet a good idea?
Should I be intermittent fasting?
What’s the fastest way to lose belly fat?
As an online dietitian, I was bombarded with these questions last year… and rightly so. Despite all the food fads and diets available, the latest CDC statistics show that obesity in American adults and children has still been increasing at its maximum historical rate since 2011.
At the same time, I was in rural Uganda where the contrast in food issues was alarming. At home we are, in a way, eating ourselves to death. Meanwhile, in developing countries, there are about 800 million people who eat just one meal a day, if that.
So these people are also up against food issues, but at the complete opposite end of the diet spectrum.
The Hunger Project Will Change The Way You Look At Food
I was in Uganda with The Hunger Project, a not-for-profit organization devoted to helping end world hunger in Africa and other continents.
Instead of providing food handouts, they raise money to build a central community building called an Epicenter. This is run by local volunteers and provides villagers with access to a health clinic, clean water, school, food storage, and micro-finance banks. There are also demonstration farms where they can they learn to farm “cash crops” such as coffee. This provides an income because it means they can grow food to sell, not just to eat.
When you actually see starving people, and how a small amount of simple food can significantly improve their lives, it puts our own consumption into perspective. It makes you reevaluate what we eat, and how much, but also what we complain about. It’s truly humbling.
Rather than try to explain what it was like, I used video to document my experience with The Hunger Project. I invite you to watch it below.
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Seeing this first-hand will change the way you think and look at food around you- how much variety we have, how accessible it is, how wasteful we are and how much we take for granted.
Learn more about my experience here or visit The Hunger Project to learn more.
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Photo credit: Diet vs. Disease