I am currently a member of an 8-man student digs at Rhodes University and, as you can imagine, it’s fairly chaotic. Each of us pays R10 a night towards dinner and this way we have the opportunity to bond and eat an inexpensive, hearty meal. Then the food price hike became a reality and it was no longer a case of “that only happens in the poor parts of Africa!” Of course, instead of re-adjusting our budget, we went for the more immediately satisfying option of spending beyond our means. We expected the rise in prices to normalize soon enough, but in hindsight this was just naïve student logic.

 

When our funds depleted to such an extent that we could no longer afford a roll of toilet paper, we decided it was time to reconvene on the budget issue. Incentive is what gets people enthusiastic, so we held a “Cheapest (yet nicest) dinner competition” in our digs, the winner getting the coveted title and a cardboard trophy. We spent hours conjuring up economical recipes hoping to outdo one another and the result was that our meals changed dramatically from, for instance, cheese burgers, chips and salad, to mixed vegetable stew or vegetable pasta. Ultimately we became vegetarians – by force of finances.  

 

Becoming vegetarians allowed us to get our budgets, and bodies, into control; so is this really such a big problem? Meat is the most inefficient food on the market as it takes an incredible 3 kg of grain to produce 1kg of pork and over 5kg of grain to produce 1 kg of beef. I’m not disillusioned enough to think that not eating meat will solve the food crisis on its own, but if everyone started grabbing the veggies instead of the biltong we’d be walking on the path of world food crisis solution.

 

Taste vs. social conscience…I’m rooting for the latter.