There has been much controversy around Brazil's spending budget during the Summer 2016 Olympics. Predictions bring Rio's final Olympic budget to $12 billion, but costs could rise as high as $20 billion. With this excessive spending, people would think that Rio is in a good financial state, but it seems that is far from the truth.
According to CBS News, the city is in the middle of its deepest recession in decades. Because of this, Rio has cut spending on healthcare and education, and police officers have gone without pay for weeks.
On top of that, more than 20 percent of the population live in shacks or shanty towns. Less than a year before the 2016 Olympics, it was estimated that just under six thousand people were homeless on the streets of Rio. Despite their poor population,16 meal centers had to be cut back or even closed due to the recession as well.
Because of these statistics, there has been question as to whether or not Rio was truly fit to host the Olympics. Either way, Rio still took on the challenge.
Yet amid the controversy on Rio's spending, one chef took it upon himself to create a restaurant that serves Rio's homeless population for free.
Italian master chef Massimo Bottura recently opened his restaurant "RefettoRio Gastromotiva" in Rio. At Bottura's restaurant, he uses leftover ingredients from Olympic caterers and local partners to make meals for the homeless. Each day during the Olympics, more than 230 tons of food has been supplied to make meals to feed the 60,000 athletes, coaches and staff and Bottura simply uses the leftovers to feed his guests.
The restaurant just opened during the Olympics and because of the special occasion, Bottura lined up local and international celebrity chefs to cook the meals. The restaurant is also unique to other "soup kitchens" because of the fancy-restaurant-feel. There's art on the walls, designer tables to dine at and pristine waiters who serve the guests.
Once the Olympics come to an end, Bottura plans on making his restaurant a lunchtime restaurant with the proceeds from lunch going toward funding dinner for the homeless. Bottura says some of his goals are rebuilding the dignity of people and educating others about food waste.
So how can other restaurants take a lesson from Bottura? Instead of throwing excess food away at night, restaurants can make the decision to donate it to those who need it. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted annually, which is more than one third of the earth's food.
So why is so much food wasted? This is often because restaurants don't realize that they can donate their extra food or they are afraid of liability issues if people get sick from the food. But with 800 million people in the world who remain hungry, there's no excuse for all the food we waste.
What can we do to help, as people of the world? We can stop buying food in large quantities because often we don't finish it before some of it spoils and it gets thrown away. We can make restaurants aware that it's perfectly legal to donate extra food. We can start volunteering at soup kitchens and donating our own food. A ripple effect can be caused just from small changes we make in our own lives.
Hopefully Bottura's restaurant is just the beginning of our world becoming conscious of food waste.
