Food exists to nourish our bodies. When we cannot consume the necessary essential nutrients, we are malnourished. By definition, obesity, or being at risk for diet-related diseases, is also malnourishment. When broken into its Latin roots, malnutrition means simply "to feed badly."
Today, there are more than 820 million people in the world who live in hunger, while obesity numbers are hitting record highs (currently more than 1 billion). We are feeding badly.
With nearly two billion people on our planet malnourished, the state of food, and its resounding impact on public health, is a global emergency. How can we eat better to live better?
By focusing on nutrient-dense food sovereignty.
As opposed to when only a few companies (like Nestle, Pepsi, or McDonalds) control access to food, food sovereignty is the system by which people have the education, resources, and control they need over their own nutrient-dense food.
Food sovereignty matters because Big Food has failed us. It has taken real food off our supermarket shelves, pushed farmers off their land, and left us hungrier and sicker.
The Unicity Make Life Better Foundation works for food sovereignty. We work to ensure people have access to and control over culturally appropriate and nutrient-dense food. And we work to ensure our food systems will continue to fuel our health for generations.
What food sovereignty looks like around the world
In Jordan, tens of thousands of Syrian families live in remote areas with little to no access to fresh food. Our partner, Lifting Hands International, has created an innovative solution to combat both food insecurity and economic independence: distributing Shami goats to families with traditional experience as goat herders.
Shami goats, known for their milk production and reproduction, provide immediate benefits, including improved nutrition from nutrient-rich goat milk, self-sufficiency, and food security from small herds bred over time. They also offer increased dignity through a return to the traditional goat herding lifestyle.
In the Philippines, the Foundation continues to support our longtime partner in building gardens in remote areas to combat malnutrition.
The produce harvested provides much-needed vegetables to schools' nutrition centers, maternal-infant feeding centers, and to those in need. The unused crops are sold at local markets, and the income is used to pay the gardeners' wages.
Furthermore, our school garden in Cañazas, Panama, is in full bloom. With an annual harvest of over 3,000 eggs and 12,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables, this rural community is no longer dependent on outside food imports.