Gaining more and more relevance, World Food Safety Day, celebrated on June 7, seeks to inspire society, governments and organizations to develop actions that prevent, detect and manage health risks transmitted by food, from production to supply, contributing to food safety and human health.
The consumption of unhealthy foods poses serious threats to human health, animals and the environment and puts everyone’s lives at risk; therefore, it is a priority topic in public health on a global scale.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that each year, about 600 million people around the world – almost 1 in every 10 inhabitants – get sick from eating contaminated food and 420,000 die from the same cause.
Unsafe food causes lost productivity, medical expenses, and damage to the economy and commerce. According to the World Bank, foodborne illness costs society $7.4 million annually in lost productivity, overburdening health systems and stunting development, as a result of loss of confidence in safe tourism, food production, food and marketing systems.
Safe food is essential to promote consumer health and end hunger, two of the UN’s 17 key Sustainable Development Goals.
In the context of humanitarian responses, food care is a constant challenge. “It is known that the increasing frequency of climate disasters, armed conflicts and the consequences left by the pandemic, are interrupting the rhythm of a healthy and balanced diet for millions of people around the world every day,” points out Mother Teresa, member of the Humanitarian Angola Mission team, coordinated by the Fraternity – International Humanitarian Missions (FIHM).
“The most vulnerable populations, including children, pregnant women, people with disabilities and the elderly, are the ones who most suffer the consequences of this destabilization,” stresses Mother Teresa.
Shalom, a humanitarian actor of the Fraternity – Humanitarian Missions (FIHM), which works on projects related to Food and Nutrition Security, points out that the organization “has been developing projects to encourage the production of multimixture flour and food dehydration, with the aim of training communities affected by food insecurity.”
The humanitarian actor explains that “the multimixture acts on health as a complement to the usual diet, as it is a source of protein, selenium, zinc and calcium. Because it is made with dried cassava leaves, sesame seeds and toasted rice and wheat bran, it is easy to prepare and store and promotes the full use of parts of vegetables that we usually do not use, encouraging accessibility to foods with high nutritional value.”
Mother Teresa adds: “The food dehydration project includes the making of solar dehydrators and the dehydration of fruits and vegetables, taking into account local resources, in addition to studies on regional fruits and vegetables, storage capacities and the importance of reusing food.”
The training, both for the production of multimixture flour and for the dehydration of foods, addresses the concept of basic care with nutritional health, hygiene, conservation, weights and measures, among other concepts. “In addition to bringing the importance of group work to the community,” explains Mother Teresa.
“We are experiencing a great humanitarian challenge in the field of Food Security, in which quick and simple humanitarian measures are needed to alleviate the suffering of those who do not have access to healthy and nutritious food, or even enough to eat,” evaluates Mother Teresa. That is why “the training courses are strategies adopted by the Fraternity – Humanitarian Missions (FIHM), as they allow the sharing of knowledge and the formation of multipliers of these approaches,” concludes the Mother.
The Multimixture Booklet is being made available as a way to encourage the dissemination of this precious food supplement in these times when hunger and malnutrition are largely responsible for the death and poor health of a large part of the population of our planet, as a result of poverty, social inequality, armed conflicts and climate crises.
