"Our Actions are our Future": thoughts on World Food Day

Today is World Food Day. I've learned that it's been observed on this October date since 1981 to draw attention to global hunger and stimulate action to support the most needy people of our world. It's also an opportunity to reflect on the food we eat and its significance for us personally and as societies. Recent themes for the day have included food security, agricultural co-operatives, food prices, migration and rural poverty. This year's focus is "our actions are our future".

As it happens, I've been thinking a lot about food this year. I went to the surgery in June to get myself checked out by the practice nurse. She looked me in the eye and said: "you're overweight with a BMI* that's well above the safe limit of 25. You need to reduce". So for the last four months I've been reducing. My ambition has been to get back to the weight I was in my mid-twenties. That would give me a BMI just within the safer zone (for as the nurse also pointed out, when you're a male of my age, you are automatically at risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke. This year I've had to learn about the first two on that ominous list - but that's another story).

As we all know, there's nothing like dieting to get you thinking about food. I don't say obsessing about it - but it has a way of taking up more than its fair share of mental space. If you've watched Michael Mosley on TV (Trust Me, I'm a Doctor) or read his books, you'll know that he believes in the habit of regular fasting to stabilise our attitude to food. His 5-2 diet - five days of normal eating each week, two with significantly reduced calorie intake - has been widely adopted. My sister who is a professional personal trainer recommends it.

And of course, this matches the importance attached to a healthy rhythm of feasting and fasting in the world's religions. In the Christian shape of each week, Sunday is a festival (commemorating the resurrection) and Friday a fast (in memory of Good Friday). Lent and Eastertide offer annual seasons for self-denial and celebration. Every feast day has its vigil or fast. I dare say that if we ate and drank accordingly, we'd be healthier as a result. When I've got down to the weight I want to be (86kg since you ask - nearly there!), Christian discipline or askesis, if I stick to it and eat and drink sensibly, ought to make sure I stay there.

Eating sensibly maybe comes down to eating reflectively, thinking about what we eat and why. Here's where World Food Day comes in. "Our actions are our future." What actions might these be? There's any number of possibilities, whether we're talking about personal, or collective, political, actions. It's obvious to all of us that the unequal way the world's resources are distributed means food affluence for some (most of us in the west), food poverty for far more in the developing world. No little personal act of mine is going to make a difference to that global fact on the ground.

Yet we also know that a lot of littles can add up to a great deal. They can symbolise to ourselves and to others our resolve to work for political and economic change, to influence public attitudes so that imbalance is redressed in favour of those who are in most need. It's an offence to our human inventiveness and capacity for problem-solving that millions of people still cry out for their daily bread. It also means thinking locally: about supporting or volunteering at our nearby food-bank, for example, or at this time of year, asking what harvest festival gifts we can bring to church that will make a difference to the lives of others.

So I'm trying to be a little more reflective about what I eat and how. The sacramental quality of food becomes more important when you are careful about your habits - how much is symbolised by our eating and drinking, especially when we are with family and friends where the beautiful word companion comes into its own - literally, a "bread-sharer" as in the French word for a chum, copain. All of this is gathered up and transcended in the Christian eucharist, the sharing of bread and wine together in memory of Jesus who died and was raised up, who commanded us on the eve of his passion to do this in remembrance of him and in a shared meal, revealed himself as the risen Lord.

What's struck me most forcibly of all during these dieting weeks is how our eating habits are intrinsically bound up with the future of our planet. George Monbiot in his Guardian column has done more than most to highlight the effects our addiction to meat-eating is having on climate change. Last week the International Panel on Climate Change published its report. It tells us that unless temperature rise over pre-industrial levels is held to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world faces catastrophic environmental damage which will lead to untold human consequences. Moreover, we have just twelve years left in which to address this crisis. Excessive meat consumption is part of the problem.

I'm struck by how disparate our attitudes to climate change are. Our government officially accepts the science behind the IPCC report and recognises the urgent need to reduce fossil-fuel dependence. Yet in the week after the report's publication, it reduces subsidies on electric cars and stands by while a court verdict allows fracking to begin again in the North of England. The public largely "gets" the message about fossil-fuels (don't use your car more than you have to, don't travel by air if there's a train you can catch, think about burning renewables rather than coal or gas) and plastics (you don't see many plastic bags being dispensed at supermarket checkouts nowadays). Yet it's far more resistant to the message about meat-eating, even though the cost to the planet of clearing forests for grazing, and of greenhouse gas emissions from cattle is unacceptably high.

So I link this year's World Food Day theme, "our actions are our future" with that of two years ago, "climate is changing; food and agriculture must change too". Food is not only about personal choices. It's political too. And as I've said, it also has profound theological and spiritual aspects. In the Lord's Prayer, daily bread really means "bread for tomorrow". I find that suggestive: if our decisions create futures for ourselves and others, so do our prayers. As for the present, our attitude to food and drink, like everything else, goes with the kind of care and responsibility we associate with mindfulness. The reflective eater, the mindful eater, the responsible eater, even the prayerful eater - I like the sound of those adjectives. They speak of wisdom. Late in time, as old age beckons, I'm trying to learn how important mindfulness is.

On last night's Look North there was a piece about the legendary Teesside Parmo that featured in a recent MasterChef broadcast. Obesity campaigners have pointed out that this North East delicacy consisting of chicken deep-fried in breadcrumbs topped with béchamel sauce and dripping with melted cheese comes in at around 2000 calories. That's close to what an average adult male needs each day to maintain his body weight. I don't want to score points but I somehow don't think this menu is for me.

By the way, I'm not a vegetarian though I love vegetarian food. I'm not teetotal. Most of fasting and dieting comes down to, not don't ever eat or drink this or that but if you do, do it with restraint. My wife tells me that portion-size is everything. Avarice and gluttony are among the seven deadly sins. Avarice is uncontrolled desire for what we don't need, gluttony uncontrolled consumption of it. Food and drink aren't the only things we desire to excess or consume too much of. But our eating and drinking can tell us much about ourselves. Which is why World Food Day is important, if only to make us think.

*body-mass index.

This Heatwave: what is it telling us?

Up here in Northumberland, we can't really speak about a heatwave, not in the way Londoners can. Cooled by the North Sea, we don't get highs much above 25 degrees. Often enough, while the rest of the nation swelters under blue skies, ours are obscured by the sea fret or haar driven inland by cool easterly winds.

But the continuing dryness is another matter. (Let's not call it a drought as it isn't officially that just yet.) On Friday we had some rain, welcome relief to gardeners and farmers alike. The lawn turned miraculously green again. But this morning the river gauge in the South Tyne has dropped back to 22 centimetres, only just above where it has stood for much of this month. As you can see from the photo, the river is now easily fordable in the village. Locals are saying that they can't recall when it was so low for so long. Normally a vigorous upland river, the Tyne is a shadow of its normal self.

In an article in today's Observer, Robin McKie cites examples from around the Northern Hemisphere of how the ferocious heat being experienced across the world is having alarming consequences. Wildfires, crop damage and human mortality are already having devastating effects. A couple of weeks ago I stood on a nearby Northumberland vantage point and watched smoke rising in the distance. Stray ordnance from the MOD ranges had set fire to the moor and while contained by fire-fighters, it was to burn for many more days yet.

Why is this happening? The immediate cause appears to be a weak jet-stream which results in the stagnation of calm high pressure areas that generate hot sunny conditions. That phenomenon in turn needs explaining of course. One abnormally dry summer does not by itself "prove" global warming. McKie is careful not to draw easy conclusions about climate change. The earth's weather systems are extraordinarily complex and are not perfectly understood. But he quotes a climate change scientist as agreeing that "it is hard not to believe that climate change has to be playing a part in what is going on round the globe at present".

This is all wearyingly familiar stuff. The consensus among climate scientists is overwhelming that our planet faces damaging and irreversible change if we don't hold the global temperature rise this century to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. International agreements to limit carbon emissions have been hard-won, but are still not enough to reverse the trend. It's questionable whether the 2 degree threshold can hold without a step-change in the collective will to achieve it. It's evidently not at the top of all political leaders' agenda. Much easier to address short-term challenges than to think beyond the lifetimes of their own generation. They will most likely all be dead before the worst effects of global warming begin to kick in. Après moi le déluge.

Or rather, après moi la canicule, to invoke that colourful French word for the kind of scorching "dog-day" heatwave we had in 2003 when thousands of people died across Europe. The question is, how do we turn these apocalyptic but distant worries into concerns of the immediate present where there is some chance that they could spur us on to devise better futures that would save the planet?

George Monbiot has been telling us for ages that one key to it (not the only one, of course) would be drastically to reduce our dependence on meat and dairy products. "While some kinds of meat and dairy production are more damaging than others, all are more harmful to the living world than growing plant protein. It shows that animal farming takes up 83% of the world’s agricultural land, but delivers only 18% of our calories. A plant-based diet cuts the use of land by 76% and halves the greenhouse gases and other pollution that are caused by food production." I find his arguments persuasive. It's not a question (I think - though some might disagree) of becoming vegetarian or vegan by conviction. I don't happen to be vegetarian, though I do eat a lot of vegetarian food because I find it enjoyable and healthy. No, I believe it's simply a matter of rebalancing our diet in the interests of the planet, its peoples and the living creatures for whom it is home. If we all took his advice, even in small ways, what a difference it would make.

It puzzles me that when I stay in hotels, I see notices in bathrooms about re-using towels for the sake of the environment. But I've yet to see signs about turning off the lights when we go out, or using public transport instead of our cars, still less about not choosing meat from the restaurant menu! It seems to be a symptom of our selective attitudes to environmental sustainability. I'm no better than the next person - let anyone without sin cast the first stone.

But I am saying that we need leadership here. Climate change ought to be at the top of every party agenda, not just that of the Greens. Strong, committed political leadership, not simply through word but (especially) by example is seriously needed and would do a lot to prise us out of our lack of urgency. And if Monbiot is right, shouldn't our churches also be debating not only how to reduce our carbon footprints but the ethics of excessive meat and dairy consumption in pursuit of more sustainable ways of living? Shouldn't the changes Brexit will make to agricultural subsidies be an opportunity for a public conversation about what we look for from the farming community on whom we depend for so much? The campaigns against CFCs, plastics and fossil fuels have shown how, when we act together, a multitude of small choices can add up to a critical mass of decisive action that leads to change. The key is greater awareness. Churches and other voluntary communities, alongside statutory agencies and the private sector, can make a big difference if they choose to. 

For us in the UK, this long hot summer is something to enjoy. But ask the farmers and they will tell you a different story. Take a look at your rivers and reservoirs. Read the international pages of your newspaper to see how serious the situation is becoming in other parts of the world. Listen to the climate scientists. Pay attention to your own conscience. We must not fail our grandchildren and their children by failing to read the signs of the times.