DUBLIN AND THE SPECTER OF HUNGER

The African continent and much of Asia suffer from a serious disease that continues without being eradicated. This disease is called “hunger”. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of people have died from lack of food. And they continue to die, particularly due to the conflicts that plague the regions where they live poorly. We could cite Sudan as the most recent example.
The United Nations and the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) strive to provide the most essential food. Europe, the United States and other Western countries also help, but these contributions are still insufficient.
In the framework of the disastrous war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has at least made the gesture of allowing Ukrainian grain exports from the Black Sea ports. The African Union and President Racip Erdogan have pleaded with Putin to prevent an even more terrible famine. And it is to be hoped that this agreement can be extended.
On May 17, a World Congress on Obesity will open in Dublin. It would be laughable to discuss the phenomenon of obesity in advanced countries, how many people, especially women, the elderly and children, die of hunger in Africa.
But, anyway, it's not a bad thing to discuss how the excessive weight of North Americans and Europeans can be controlled; what diets and other measures can be recommended to reduce mortality rates caused by obesity and related diseases.
In Dublin, a few hundred nutritionists, epidemiologists, and other specialists who combat the danger of being increasingly fatter are going to meet.
And it is curious that this congress in the Irish capital is going to be partly financed by various international food companies. The first of these, the Swiss company Nestlé, which NGOs and a group of scientists accuse, precisely, of promoting obesity with their products. Nestlé is the number 1 food company in the world and its annual profits are of the order of 100,000 million euros.
Two years ago, the Financial Times published a study according to which 60 percent of its products and 96 percent of its beverages are seriously deficient in nutritional terms. Incredible! Some will say, but the study was based on scientific data: the products of the Swiss international are full of sugar and fat; and ultra-transformed up to a limit that constitutes a health risk. The sugary world of Nestlé is not as idyllic as it is supposed to be.
The obesity problem is serious, of course; And although the famine is clearly worse, it should be remembered that, last March, the influential "British Medical Journal" condemned the marketing strategies of event organizers such as the one in Dublin.
“It turns out – the British publication stated – that those who organize these meetings, the first thing they do is look for sponsors in international firms that logically should be condemned in the discussions of scientists and experts.
It also makes us laugh that the Dublin event has already announced receiving an important check from one of Nestlé's subsidiaries, “PromoKal”, which manufactures the so-called “hunger breaks”, those that reduce appetite. The "Promokal" method is being sold in Europe and the USA in industrial quantities. Nestlé claims that the appetite is almost miraculously reduced and the product provides the necessary proteins and other nutritional elements.
This method will be one of those that will be scrutinized to the seams by those assembled in Dublin in a few days.