I grew up hearing this saying often, “Waste not, want not.” Although I wasn’t rich, I didn’t really “want” for too much as a child. I had food, clean water, clothing, shelter, etc. (and still do) so I never thought deeply enough about this saying until I watched a documentary film called Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story. Two filmmakers decided to try and survive for six months solely on food that had been discarded in America. By the end of the six months they had paid less than $200 for food and rescued more than $20,000 worth of perfectly edible food; more than they could even possibly begin to consume. The footage of what they found was astounding—huge, industrial-size dumpsters full to the brim with unopened, perfectly good food; and this was not a rare find . . . this was the norm week to week when they went on their nighttime “grocery runs.” Most of the food was not past its “sell by” date and much of what they found was even natrual.
Approximately one-third of the food produced worldwide never gets eaten. This is enough food to feed 3 billion people. And, to add insult to injury, the decaying food is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—approximately 4.4 gigatons each year. In America the largest source of methane emissions (which is a GHG that has 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide) is organic waste—rotting food. Then there’s the water wasted. . . the water used to produce food that never gets eaten would provide 9 billion people with 200 liters of water per day! Each year 25% of the world’s fresh water supply and land area, that cumulatively would be larger than China, are used to grow food that ends up wasted or lost.[1]
Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul.
– Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement
All of this usage might be worthwhile if the food produced was actually nourishing people, but when a child dies every 10 seconds due to causes related to malnutrition and nearly half of all deaths among children under 5 worldwide are caused by hunger, this waste, mismanagement of distribution, and misappropriation of precious, dwindling natural resources is, in actuality, a crime against humanity.[2] World hunger was decreasing for a while in the second half of the twentieth century, but currently it is on the rise again and affecting nearly 10% of people worldwide. From 2019 to 2023, the number of undernourished people increased by approximately 150 million people. This crisis is mainly caused by global conflicts, the displacement and refugee crisis, climate change, and the Covid-19 pandemic.[3]
Why is it happening that millions of people starve while millions of pounds of food rot? What is at the root of this waste and how does it relate to “food for ascension”? I believe this food-waste manifestation is a physical reflection of the current collective consciousness state of our planet, which is in need of a great healing. We are fractured and divided into “races” and “religions” under the misconception that we are separate, when in truth we are one global family. Throughout the centuries, there have always been those who have known that true happiness actually comes from the richness of our relationships and the love of family and friends. Unfortunately, in these contemporary times, most of the world has embraced the “Great American Dream,” which has come to represent gaining happiness and fulfillment through mostly material wealth and self-indulgence. Corporately-controlled media—that is dedicated to perpetuating the consumer culture of greed—spews a constant stream of propaganda across the planet to make us “buy” that dream of material richness, and hence we have an increasingly self-oriented, self-serving collective planetary consciousness. Thus the majority of our food production systems globally are disjointed and greed-motivated.
“Food” comes in many forms—physically, socially, intellectually, and spiritually—and increasingly much of what we imbibe in one way or another is nutritionless, while we let “gourmet buffets” of healthy sustenance go to waste.
Our physical food supply is an obvious example of calories lacking in nutrition, as more and more “food” on grocery store shelves are full of sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and chemicals of all kinds—and many are genetically modified. Currently, in the U.S. more than 34 million people have diabetes and there are an estimated 88 million with prediabetes. At this rate it is predicted that approximately 55 million Americans will have diabetes by 2030. It is one of the world’s fastest-growing chronic diseases.[4] Empty calories from added sugars and saturated fats plague our food supply. The only way this will change is if we demand fresh, healthy food and refuse to purchase the “non-foods” that are literally killing us. To do this people must come together to speak out as one voice. We must grow food locally together in community gardens. We must also work together to distribute food properly so that all people locally are fed healthy foods and that food is not wasted.
By creating alliances and communities of food-related activism that perpetuate healthy food systems of growth, production, and distribution, we can begin to make the changes necessary to stop being dependent on the corporate system of greed for our life’s sustenance and become interdependent as brothers and sisters sharing the resources of Mother Earth. In becoming proactive in these areas, we help actualize Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of how change happens among all peoples of the planet: Think globally, act locally. Grassroots movements linked with other movements across the planet will eventually result worldwide in nutritional food that promotes good health (rather than preventing it) through sustainable farming, gardening, and production methods as well as fair and just distribution of this food to all peoples of the planet.
Mind food is something else we waste. Time spent beneficially feeding our minds—reading, writing, creating art, studying, and developing the art of conversation—has been increasingly replaced over the past few decades with television, video games, and social media. The average American today will have spent 15 years of their life watching television by the time they die.[5]
Worldwide an estimated 4.9 billion people use social media and the average person spends about 145 minutes on social media each day.[6] As we are now a few decades into the age of computer technology, more and more studies are showing the adverse effects the misuse of these technologies is having on the brain. While they can be wonderful tools, they can also be addictive and destructive.
The mind has a job to do, and its job is to THINK. But of course our minds sometimes need to pause and rest, and not just during sleep. Additionally, what we feed our minds, as “fuel” or “food for thought,” is crucial. In a world full of distractions and frankly inundated with mental “junk food” and “eye candy” for the mind, it has become imperative to unplug ourselves and our thoughts from all our devices and allow time away, especially outdoors and in nature, where the pace of life taps into the rhythms of the Creator, allowing those spaces in our thinking for higher insights, genuine problem resolution, and connection with the spiritual side of life to flow into our minds. We need to plug our minds into the Divine Mind and that circuitry where eternity meets up with our present moment in time and space. If you put junk food into your body, you get low output, dysfunction, and ultimately long-term disease. The same is true of the mind; we need to be discerning WHAT we watch, read, listen to, talk about, wish for, and contemplate. It is ever so true, “You are what you think.”
I believe at the root of the problems of modern society—including the outrageous food waste and malnutrition I addressed above—is that we waste spiritual food, and, unfortunately, often we don’t even look for it or recognize it when it crosses our path—all of which is a direct by-product of all those hours lost with TV and other electronic devices that distract our minds and cast aside our souls. Much of the world is truly “spiritually malnourished.” In reality, there is actually an abundance of beautiful spiritual truth woven throughout all the religions of the world and throughout the Vanetic teachings of history[7], as well as the teachings of many prophets, philosophers, activists, poets, mystics, and saints alike, but the true “fruits of the Spirit” are not flourishing in people as they should be.
Being in the company of good people with pure motives is a key component to adding more spiritual food into our lives. So is the practice of kindness, gratitude, humility, generosity and many other attitudes of giving and love towards others. These and other simple yet cosmic truths—based in truth, beauty, and goodness—taught throughout history are too often overridden by lower human tendencies like greed, selfishness, anger, and narcissism, and thus, instead of truly being our brother’s and sister’s keeper, we wage war against each other in God’s name. When individuals worldwide begin to realize we are one planetary family under one Universal Father and act accordingly, we will be able to remedy our innumerable and increasing global problems. The only “food for ascension” that will heal us is making higher choices by walking in the spiritual realms and seeking the Creator’s perfect will; by becoming part of the worldwide SpiritualutionSM movement.
SPIRITUALUTIONSM—JUSTICE TO THE PEOPLE movement: A global spiritual-revolution started by Van of Urantia, designed to inspire and influence millions to come out of the system of greed and organized and antiquated religions, to join communities and grow their own food near a good water source, as he believes in the prophecies of the Hopis, Mayans, Nostradamus, the Prophets of the Old Testament, and the Book of Revelation that speak of the purification of the Earth Mother through drastic climate changes, which he believes are now happening and will continue to worsen.[8]
[1] Robinson, Deena, 25 Shocking Facts About Food Waste, December 2, 2022, https://earth.org/facts-about-food-waste/
[2] World Food Program USA, 10 Facts About Child Hunger in the World, October 2, 2021, Updated July 12, 2022, https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/10-facts-child-hunger/
[3] Read, Tom, World Hunger: Key Facts and Statistics in 2023, Updated August 1, 2023, https://www.deliveryrank.com/blog/world-hunger-facts-statistics
[4] SingleCare, Medically reviewed by Galan, Nicole, Diabetes statistics 2023, Updated February 3, 2023, https://www.singlecare.com/blog/news/diabetes-statistics/
[5] Lake, Rebecca, Television Statistics: 23 Mind-Numbing Facts to Watch, Updated February 26, 2023, https://www.creditdonkey.com/television-statistics.html
[6] Wong, Belle, Top Social Media Statistics And Trends Of 2023, Updated May 18, 2023, https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/social-media-statistics/
[7] Van of Urantia, Vanetics, https://uaspr.org/vanetics-podcast
[8] Van of Urantia, Times of the Purification, https://spiritualution.org/learn/purification