I totally forgot to share that Mayank Rocks dot com is now a Page Rank of 4. I think that this happened in the latest google page rank update. I have just noticed that my yahoo backlinks have also crossed 50,000 and I am pretty happy. The only problem with my blog is my lazyness due to which I don’t update much. This is more like a personal blog rather to make it a source of income for now. When I get serious with it, you would see a daily update on my blog.

Note that by being among the top commentators, you can get a free good quality backlink from my blog. So keep commenting guys!

The grocery bills are constantly rising. Food banks are running short of donations and there are riots in the poor countries through out the world. Do you have any idea that what is ending up in the landfill in the United States? Americans waste around 27% of the food available for consumption according to the government study and it does happen in the supermarket, restaurants, cafes and in the kitchens. Almost a pound of food is thrown away a day by every American. Shocked?

Grocery stores discard the products due to spoilage or minor cosmetic blemishes. Hotels and Restaurants throw away what they don’t use and the consumers throw out everything from bananas that have turned brown to last week’s chinese leftovers. The food waste studies in 1997 found that 96.4 billion pounds of the total 356 billion pounds of edible food in United States was never eaten. 2/3rds of the food waste are fresh milk, grain products and sweetners. Americans are producing around 30 million tons of food waste each year which accounts to 12% of the total waste stream. It is now that the numbers seem all staggering, given the cost of the food is going up and there is a food crisis around the world.

After George Bush had said recently that India’s middle class was helping in pushing up the food prices by demanding better food and more food, the officials in India said that not only do the Americans eat too much but also throw out too much food. If Americans slimmed down to the weight of middle class Indians, many people in the sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates. Also note the fact that the food that ends up in the landfills produces Methane, a major source of greenhouse gases.

Even if we recover the 5% of the food that is wasted overall, it could feed 4 million people a day.

Increasing Prosperity In India had led to better diets, greater demand and increasing prices, all of which had contributed to the worldwide food crisis.

Goerge Bush says “India has around 350 million people which is more than America’s entire population. When you start getting wealth, you start demanding, better nutrition, better food. And so demand is high and that causes prices to go up. Chinese & Indians are responsible for this global food crisis as they are eating more and causing worldwide shortages.

Now let us have a look at some interesting facts : -

US DIET IS 5 TIMES RICHER THAN INDIA’S

They say, we eat more? How much is MORE Actually? Can anyone of you answer this? No. I’ll tell you.

Due to a larger population, we consume more food grains, dairy products, vegetable oils and meat of all kinds. But the real elephant in the room that nobody is willing to talk about is how much does each person get to eat. This is going to shock all of you.

Each Indian gets to eat about 178 kg of grains in one year while a US citizen consumes more than 1046 kg. Infact, in per capita terms, US grain consumption is twice that of the European Union and three times that of china. Grain consumption includes flour, by conversion, alcohol.

These figures are for 2007, collated by the US department of Agriculture. And per capita consumption is increased from 946kg to 1046 kg from 2003-2007. But India’s has remained static over years.

US Leads the world in meat consumption!

Americans consume around 78kg of meat per year for each person whereas Indians consume 36 kg per person and 11kg in China. Vegetable oils aswell, US consumes 41kg whereas India does only with 11kg.

Perhaps it is time to include the lifestyle choices of the west in the whole feverish debate on how to tackle the global food crisis…….

Did You Know?

India is a net exporter of agriculture products, we feed ourselves mostly and don’t export much. US has been transferring their land of agriculture into bio fuels and to cover up their own fault, putting the blame on India and China.

There has been a decline in food production in North America. Every continent is fine but only North America. However there is an ever increasing demand of food crops over there. How Ironic?

Now I want to ask a question to all of you - Should We(Indians & Chinese) Stop Eating?

Sorry everyone for not keeping the blog updated but I had no choice. There was some problem in BSNL internet, some port problem as they told me. It took them 10 days to rectify this and fix it. Pretty pathetic service because I had to call them everyday so many times to get it fixed. Finally I got bored and stopped calling, they did fix it finally. I would have had cancelled their connection anytime for the patheticness but then I have no choice. The only other alternative to BSNL is Airtel and it is not available in my area. Airtel was much better than BSNL, more serious and their service was also good. But the good thing that I found out yesterday was that they have added the new plan - 512 unlimited at only 1350rupees. I am happy because now I will have a faster connection. Right now I was using 256 unlimited. I never go for limited plans, I find it risky, it will be really costly if it ever crossed the limit plus I always keep downloading games, movies and music, so I definitely need a unlimited plan.

This was the main reason that I was not able to keep my blog updated. But now that it is fixed I will try to keep the blog updated. Hopefully no more problems will come between me and my blog. Sorry for keeping you all waited for so long again.