Hunger fangs

“Check your egos at the door.”

On 28 January 1985, over three dozen American pop artists, ranging from the iconic Bob Dylan to the genre-bending Cyndi Lauper, were greeted by this message as they trickled into the A&M Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California, close to midnight.

Posted by charismatic music producer Quincy Jones, that reminder would prove prophetic as tempers flared many times in the drawn-out recording session that ended before dawn. The likes of then-current stars Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen still found the energy to cast musical magic with legends like Harry Belafonte.

The song they’d produce, “We Are The World,” as USA For Africa, would become a global phenomenon like its inspiration, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” — the collaboration by UK’s best artists calling themselves Band Aid. Together, the two songs would raise millions of dollars to turn the tide on famine and starvation in Africa.

Bob Geldof’s brainchild was an out-and-out guilt trip, as while well-off people celebrated Christmas of 1984 with food aplenty, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” brought to their TV screens during the MTV era heart-wrenching images of flies buzzing around starving, skin-and-bones Ethiopian babies and children as they died on roadsides and inside tents.

“We Are The World” would win a Grammy in 1986. It topped charts worldwide and became the fastest-selling US pop single in history, generating over $80 million ($222 million today) for famine relief efforts.

While images of famine and hunger continue to capture headlines, a recently released United Nations report covering 2022 showed a festering silent scandal: Over one billion meals, enough to feed millions of people facing hunger, are wasted daily.

Wasted food, according to the UN Environment Program, represents a staggering US$1 trillion each year, exposing the true cost of a global fest gone bad. The study showed that landfills overflowing with rotting food contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, releasing methane, a potent climate change accelerator.

In the Philippines, wasted food, discarded by restaurants and groceries, has created a subset of culinary intervention that would put to shame the Michelin-worshiping gourmands. As poverty has forced individuals to scavenge for discarded food scraps, the “pagpag” phenomenon was born.

Literally, “pagpag” translates to “shaking off the dirt” from the scavenged food so they could be eaten anew, not by animals, but by poor Filipinos exposed to the dehumanizing reality of hunger. Having food, we are reminded, is not a birthright but something one must work hard for, even if that work involves foraging in dumpsters and alleys at the back of food joints.

Reality check: Food scavenging isn’t unique to the Philippines; similar stories have emerged from countries such as Brazil and, believe it or not, Japan. Food waste, alas, transcends borders, reflecting a collective failure to balance food distribution across societal tiers.

A billion meals being wasted daily compels introspection: Can we, in good conscience, continue to discard mountains of food while millions go hungry? Are we not inviting ecological disaster with the environmental toll of our wasteful food habits?

Shall we be remembered as a planet of overflowing plates and overflowing landfills, or a utopian world where food nourished and sustained all? The latter, at the rate mankind is going, could be hallucinatory, the effect of recurring hunger mucking one’s thinking.