Free Food Challenge

 As a regular forager I have often wondered whether I could live off foraged food or an extended period of time but the difficulty is getting enough carbohydrate and protein. However while doing Foraging Workshops with the Women's Resource Centre I have been taking advantage of the rescued food there, which coincidently solves my problem of getting enough carbohydrates and protein. So I decided to challenge myself to eat nothing but free food for a week and see what I learnt.

To be clear this is an intellectual exercise for me because although I regularly eat foraged and home grown food, am low income and try to keep my food bill as low as I can and still be healthy, I am not forced into this by circumstances.

It is estimated that between 4-13% of Australians experience food insecurity  and this is a deliberate choice of the government to keep welfare payments at half of the poverty line. We saw this when it was temporarily raised during the beginning of the COVID pandemic and then removed again while tax cuts to the rich and buying nuclear submarines still happened.

Along aside this appalling situation of 5 million Australians in a wealthy country going hungry we also have incredible food waste with 7.3 million tonnes of food being wasted a year. In Bega the Sapphire Community Pantry and Women's Resource Centre attempt to divert some of this food waste to local people and those in need of food. 

As I do the Ration Challenge every year and live on Syrian refugee rations for a week I did not expect to find this a difficult challenge. As usual the hardest thing is not having tea or coffee but I had an amazing array of herb teas using my garden and foraging including lavender, fennel, lemon verbena, mint, pine, lemon, and citrus leaves.

I foraged for lilly pillies, warrigal greens, edible greens, nasturtiums, wild onions, apricots and mulberries. Free food I picked up at Women's Resource Centre, Sapphire Community Pantry, a party and Candelo Bulk Wholefoods included lots of bread, eggs, butter, vegetarian fake meat products, roast potatoes, pears, some mouldy cheddar cheese, carrots, celery, cauliflower, celeriac, cucumber, tomatoes, kumara, broccolini, bok choy, some dips and eggplant. 

So I actually ate very well....

      

     

     

However these are some of the things I learnt:

1) I have the privilege of having a cook top, oven, utensils, fridge and a microwave. Not everyone does.

2) I have the privilege of time. Not everyone does.

3) When you are stressed about food it is almost impossible to be creative with what you have. Hence the one time I felt hungry when I ate only bread and butter for breakfast. 

4) Rigid expectations about what food is consumed when, stops you realising you have enough food. See above. I could have eaten leftovers for breakfast. 

5) You can have too much bread

6) There is too much bread waste because of consumer expectation of choice. 

7) Green leafy vegetables are frequently left because they lose sellability early, and perhaps people don't know how to cook with them.

8) Condiments are under appreciated

9) Spices are under appreciated

10) Thank goodness for the butter because it enabled me to fry things. Oil is a precious food. 

Some of the things that we take for granted are the ability to have a cup of coffee with a friend (this is unaffordable for many people) and to have friends and family over for a meal. People in food insecurity are denied these social bonding opportunities.

The other main thing which I have noted before is that we will experience psychological scarcity and hunger WAY before we experience physiological hunger. When we are unable to get the foods that we are accustomed to eating we experienced distress, even if other food is available. 

Food prices are expected to rise 6-7% in 2022 as a result of climate change disasters and global supply chain issues this will push even more people into food insecurity. At a societal level we need to fix the mismatch between people experiencing hunger and our obscene food waste. At an individual level we need to practise making do with what we have, reducing food waste, try new foods and being creative with our cooking. 

One thing I have changed since doing this challenge is I shop at the Sapphire Community Pantry before Coles to help reduce food waste and raise money to help people in genuine food insecurity.