Elly Brown

Bottom Line and Belt Line: Eating Healthy to Solve Malnutrition

A burger or salad? Fries or carrot sticks? With a dizzying array of food choices, we are all faced with tough decisions on what to eat. Table For Two (TFT) helps us make these decisions as easy as pie. By choosing to eat portion-controlled, well-balanced meals through a TFT partner, you can help children stay healthy in Africa where hunger is often a grim reality.

Over 1 billion people in the world lack access to adequate food and nutrition while another 1 billion face health risks associated with obesity and overeating. These seemingly bifurcated problems are actually inter-related and reflect the global food imbalance. TFT’s solution aims to addresses these issues by encouraging behavioral changes related to portion size and prompts students, restaurant customers and company employees to think about the global hunger epidemic. “TFT transfers excess calories from one part of the world to regions of the world that can use those calories,” says Fumi Tosu, Co-President of TFT USA.

TFT partners with restaurants, corporate cafeterias, university dining halls and other food establishments to serve nutritionally balanced, calorie-controlled TFT-approved menu options. The nonprofit organization says 25 cents of every TFT-approved meal sold is donated to provide a hearty lunch for a student in Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Tanzania or South Africa. Founded in Japan over four years ago, TFT now partners with over 500 food establishments around the world operating in the US, UK, Switzerland, India, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Italy.

Table for Two’s CSR program is unique for three reasons:

1. It helps others by helping yourself. There’s no other convincing way of saying to yourself, “do I really need to eat that cheese burger?” when the alternative involves helping a child eat a healthy meal and stay in school one day longer.

2. It is sustainable. Rather than relying on donations to sustain their programming, their model relies on cashflow, one meal at a time.

3. It creates connection. The high-visibility of the program builds connection with employees and students.

TFT says it has sold over 10.1 million meals globally.

TFT USA just launched a national campaign last week called 100 Campuses in 100 Days. They are rapidly scaling out their program across the US and seeking commitment from university cafeterias on one hundred campuses to serve TFT-branded meals.

Keep an eye out for a TFT-branded meal near you, and make a small contribution to alleviating hunger, one healthy meal at a time. For details on the 100 Campuses in 100 Days campaign, visit http://www.tablefor2.org/tft_usa/100-campuses-in-100-days-campaign/

Categories
Health Care, Social Enterprise
Tags
nutrition, social enterprise