Editor,

The first shock I got after going to the West is the amount of food being thrown away.

Having lived in this environment for more than a decade now, I have discovered that it is much wiser to throw away such "food” (especially the McDonalds variety) rather than distributing it to the other "hungry parts of the world”, as Ivan R Mugisha advocated for in his commentary "While some die from lack of food, others die from too much” because of the following reasons:

Food in the West is just quantity without the corresponding nutritional value. We may be eating less- but we are eating a more balanced diets, especially in the rural areas.

Food in the West has more toxins: Plant food is harvested prematurely without natural ripening.

The animals get too many antibiotics and most are not grazed on natural materials. Instead, they are fed on high carbohydrate diets (maize meal and sometimes the ground remains of dead animals).

The primary aim is to grow these animals faster than the natural clock. This artificial food chain provokes the transmission of deadly infections, like Mad Cow disease, to human beings. 

Some food has higher levels of processed sugars: which leads to chronic obesity which triggers long-term diseases like diabetes. This problem is aggravated by the increasingly sedentary lifestyles of many citizens.

Migrant Africans initially become quite fascinated by the cheap McDonald food. Consequently their weight goes up dangerously, until the doctors put them back on the leaner "traditional” diets from back home.

Fortunately, a number of enterprising migrants have opened shops importing traditional foods from our home continent.

Based on this experience and knowledge we are asking the continental Africans to please run hurriedly past those McDonalds without a second glance.

Rwandan living in the Diaspora