Michelin chefs join feeding scheme before Lunar New Year
CHARITY organisation Feeding Hong Kong has called on eight Michelin-starred chefs to help pack festive food bags for low-income families ahead of the Lunar New Year.
According to Feeding Hong Kong, around 3600 tons of food waste ends up in Hong Kong landfills annually despite more than 1 million people who live in the city struggling to afford nutritious meals.
The charity said that since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for food assistance had increased.
The food parcels they distribute include rice, canned abalone and dried mushrooms.
“We are so lucky to have this amazing group of chefs with us, helping us to pack a very special Chinese New Year food parcel,” Gabrielle Kirstein, the founder of Feeding Hong Kong, told South China Morning Post.
“We’ve had rising unemployment, loss of income and rising food prices. So families that were getting by okay are now struggling to afford the basics.
“And so what we’re doing is just making sure that for many of the families we support, we are able to offer them not just the basics, but something special for Chinese New Year,” she said.
The chefs also went on a workshop which raised awareness of the food poverty crises in Hong Kong, before taking up their cooking challenge of using limited ingredients and equipment.
According to Hong Kong Tatler,
Feeding Hong Kong redistributes more than 250 000 meals each month and is looking to expand to help mitigate the effects of the pandemic.
“When one in three seniors and one in five children in our city fall under the poverty line of just HK$4500 (about R8 700) per month, it’s clear that (Feeding Hong Kong’s) workload is immense and only increasing with Covid,” food writer Chris Dwyer told Hong Kong Tatler.
“At the same time, many in the F&B (food and beverage) industry have recently lost their jobs and are now themselves impacted by food insecurity,” he said.