According to a food redistribution NPO's research, a family of four needs to earn between R3,500 and R4,500 to follow a healthy diet for one month, but how feasible is this when over half of the country lives below the poverty line?
CAPE TOWN - After being faced with some health-related issues, my doctor advised me to follow a healthy eating plan.
This realisation got me thinking: How are people who don’t earn a lot of money, or those who rely on grants and state pensions, able to afford a healthy diet – if at all? "So, the reason why people can’t afford healthy food, it is just not affordable. Yoghurts, fruits, vegetables, healthy starches, proteins are just out of the reach of ordinary South Africans.”
The organisation said statistics showed that one-third of food in South Africa got dumped, while more than 30 million people experienced food insecurity.The organisation sources, collects and stores edible surplus food from the supply chain - farmers, wholesalers, manufacturers, and retailers – and redistributes the food to its large network of vetted beneficiary organisations across the country.
“We are not just a feeding programme, we are very strategic about where the food goes, so we pick organisations that focus on education, skills development, youth, abused women, orphans and vulnerable children and healthcare beneficiary organisations,” Du Plessis explained.Eyewitness News spent some time at FoodForward SA’s Lansdowne warehouse last week, where donated food items and other necessities, as well as procured items were stacked up on rows of shelves.
“There are things like yoghurts that we are not even able to buy because of our funds, so our children get to get that daily nutritious meals. It helps their brain development, it helps them to grow, we would really be failing our young people if we don’t have these nutritious meals for them.”“We had one child that came with severe malnutrition. Maybe there wasn’t food, we don’t know what was going on, but the child was 13 years old but looked like a six-year-old.
“That’s a third of children across the country. And the problem with malnutrition is those children have poor health outcomes, they have poor developmental outcomes, and there’s been an abundance of research that has shown that children that suffer from malnutrition have poor income potential growing older."
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