Look at good, clean and fair food

Iwent vegan when I came to Dubai five years ago. That is when I started the slow food convivium and in doing my research on the food system I faced a big problem with finding food that meets the criteria that I was looking for – good, clean and fair. Those are the pillars of the slow food movement.

Whether something is produced using pesticides or chemicals and questioning whether it is free of all antibiotics should be the question. Because for your health, whether it is meat or vegetables, if something is not produced with the least amount of chemicals and pesticides, it is not good for you. I do not believe that if the whole world went vegan it would save the planet or stop global warming. We need animals to graze and to put things back into the soil. The problem is that because of the high demand for cattle, we have killed the wild ruminants that would run the planes and replaced them with sheep and goats and cattle. They now are unfortunately force-fed and it has turned into a crazy, vicious circle.

Officially, the United Nations has stated that up to 40 per cent of the food produced does not reach the market. 38 per cent of the food that does get to market, according to UN again, is wasted as well. So, we are talking about billions of tonnes of food. If that food could get to the people and we could just stop wasting, we could feed twice the world population. So, at the end of the day, unfortunately, it comes down to economics and politics. From Ms Laura Allais-Mare Founder and current leader of the slow food convivium in Dubai