"World Food Crisis" Final Chapter | Promoting Food Education to Reduce Food Waste — O SenTai Advocate Sustainable Diet
发布于 2023年01月23日
Posted on 23rd January 2023
Climate change, food scarcity, and malnutrition continue to affect countries around the world, and yet food waste remains a pressing issue. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one-third of all food produced globally is lost or wasted from farm to table. That amount of food could feed 1.26 billion hungry people.
Since 2014, Foo Ching Yee (Cyeefoo) has been involved in the "Clean Plate Campaign", visiting primary schools to encourage children not to waste food. After recently leaving her job, she founded the O Sentai studio, fully dedicating herself to promoting food education and advocating for a more sustainable way of eating.
"The food crisis has always existed. Every year, the United Nations calls for ambitious goals, and one of them is addressing the issue of food security. I read extensively and watch documentaries, and the more I learn, the more anxious I become. The sense of crisis only grows stronger, because environmental changes are happening at a much faster pace than the speed at which we are causing destruction."
Supporting Local Products
I met up with Cyeefoo at a coffee shop. Before our interview began, she decided to order a hand-brewed coffee. At the counter, the barista presented two options: one from Ethiopia, the other from Guatemala. As usual, Cyeefoo carefully scanned the packaging for product details and said, “Neither of these is local coffee… hmm… but this one is processed in Malaysia. I’ll go with this one.”
Unlike many who prioritise aroma, flavor, and appearance, her thoughts on food never stray far from one core principle of sustainable consumption—supporting local products.
“Sustainable eating is the key to addressing the food crisis.” As a board member of the SustainableX Community Association, Cyeefoo has long been promoting natural farming and food education in Malaysia. Perhaps thanks to her background in producing children’s programs, she has a unique ability to explain complex issues in simple, engaging ways, starting from farm to table, gradually extending to the long chain of food supply and consumption, raising public awareness about the urgency of the food crisis.
“From food production to ensuring food waste is returned to the land, including what nurtures a plant’s growth. These are the aspects of the food chain I care about most.”
Food education encompasses nutrition, food safety, dietary culture, and the food industry chain. From there, it branches into kitchen education, edible campuses, and the slow food culture, each with a unique focus. Put simply, as long as it concerns the relationship between food and people, it falls within the scope of food education.
Cyeefoo actively advocates buying local foods, like avocados grown in Malaysia from Indonesian varieties are 2-3 times larger than imported ones, and their flavor is just as good!
From Soil to Table: Promoting the “Clean Plate Campaign”
Between September 2014 and August 2016, Cyeefoo served as the chief planner of the Happymove “Clean Plate Campaign”, leading her team into schools across the Klang Valley to promote the idea of not wasting food. Through short courses and lifestyle camps, she accompanied primary school students as they engaged in hands-on activities， crafting eco-friendly items, planting seedlings, harvesting vegetables, and preparing meals.
Food education, in her view, should never stay on paper. Nearly all of the programs she designed required children to get their hands dirty. “When you grow vegetables, you look forward to their progress. If the harvest doesn’t turn out as expected, you feel disappointed. That experience helps you understand that food does not come easily, and only then will you truly value it.”
She recalled implementing the “Clean Plate Campaign” at SJK (C) Kwong Hon, where the focus was to reduce food waste. The children first learned a “seed concept”, beginning with the land itself, exploring soil properties, and learning how to care for crops before moving on to dietary habits at the table. Each stage guided them to learn dynamically rather than passively.
“Only through the land can children directly feel this connection,” Cyeefoo explained. This was why she sought out partnerships with many small organic farmers, organizing lifestyle camps directly in the fields. With flexibility in tailoring lessons for different audiences, she never limited herself to narrow definitions of food knowledge but always circled back to the core idea of sustainable eating. In December last year, she collaborated with the environmental education platform Let’sRE and organized a three-day, two-night “Forest Life Observer Camp” at SJK (C) Taman Connaught. There, students not only cooked their own lunches but also immersed themselves in nature. She even extended her efforts to training teachers within schools. “Educators are the key players, without them, this idea cannot be carried forward.”
Children Become “Monitors” to Remind Their Parents
“I didn’t study environmental education, I studied mass communication. But I’ve always wanted the things I do to stay connected to society,” Cyeefoo shared.
Her first encounter with the "Clean Plate Campaign" happened eight years ago, while she was working at a multimedia studio. There, she met an educator, who had just launched the campaign, and this marked their first collaboration in public education. Together, they stepped into schools to advocate for reducing food waste.
When brainstorming strategies, Cyeefoo suggested starting from local foods. Although she wasn’t an academic by training, her involvement in the campaign pushed her to dive into books and documentaries on food education and food culture. She laughed as she recalled: “That was the first time I ever broke my own rule, I read so many books, all about food culture and food education. I read from the moment I woke up! I just wanted answers, how do we solve this food issue?”
In October 2022, she founded O Sentai Studio as a long-term platform for food education. One of its key missions is to teach children about natural ingredients and to collaborate with NGOs and environmental groups to organise workshops, camps, and sharing sessions—mostly aimed at primary school students.
She is realistic about the challenges: not every child can fully understand the complexities of a global food crisis, nor will they instantly change their eating habits. But she sees her role as planting the seeds of social and humanistic care. Through simple, hands-on experiences, children can grow into little “monitors” who even remind their parents to value food and avoid waste. “If we can spark curiosity and care in them, that’s enough to ripple outward and inspire more people to pay attention to food issues.”
“The results are maybe only 30% or 40%, but they are positive ones,” Cyeefoo reflected. “These are people who might start small—planting in a little backyard plot or practicing mindful eating at home. But through them, the message can spread further.”
She shared that some children, after attending her food education classes, even go home and become little “inspectors”, reminding their parents not to waste food and to finish what’s on their plates.
“In fact, what we’re really doing is using children’s language to communicate these values back to adults,” she explained. In her workshops, Cyeefoo often emphasises the concept of “eat only in season”: if it’s not the right season, don’t eat it; if your body doesn’t need it, don’t eat it; and consider how to promote and support local foods.
Public Awareness of Food Crisis Remains Low
Even after experiencing food shortages, panic buying, and stockpiling during the Covid-19 pandemic, Cyeefoo believes that too few people in Malaysia truly care about food issues. Many adopt a passive “take things as they come” attitude.
“Awareness of the food crisis in our society is low. Unless something like the nationwide Movement Control Order (MCO) happens, people don’t really feel it. Even then, food might get more expensive, but people will still buy it. They don’t really understand the severity and urgency of the overall situation, because we’ve never been in a long-term state of food deprivation.”
“It’s something that’s hard to feel—people only cry out when the needle actually pricks them.”
Beyond raising awareness about cherishing food, Cyeefoo’s future education plans also cover nutrition and food safety—such as how to choose food wisely, read ingredient labels, and even have children make fast food and sugary drinks themselves. Through this, they can judge whether something is healthy, and learn to distinguish between artificial coloring and natural colors.
Apart from poverty, which prevents access to healthy food, modern urban illnesses are also a growing concern—obesity, high blood sugar, heart attacks, and age-related decline. According to Malaysia’s National Health and Morbidity Survey, 1 in every 15 Malaysians is obese, facing risks of cardiovascular blockage. Additionally, 3.9 million Malaysians have diabetes, and 6.4 million suffer from high blood pressure.
Hoping to Bring Environmental Food Education into the Curriculum
Calling herself a child of Sabah, Cyeefoo grew up closely connected to nature and feels pained when she witnesses environmental destruction—an issue closely tied to resource distribution.
She gave the example of agriculture: “If you keep planting on the same field and keep taking from others’ land and water, then when our desires and demands eventually lessen, we won’t need to plant so much. The land won’t age as fast, environmental damage will be reduced, and less land will need to be cleared.”
“If our society were less obsessed with always having more, wouldn’t resources be distributed more fairly? These are issues of awareness. Through food education, people can begin to reflect on the fact that other countries may be unable to access food due to poverty or inequality. That way, empathy can be cultivated, leading people to take real action to protect food.”
She believes that environmental education and food education will become increasingly important, noting that many are already advocating for local food. Cyeefoo hopes that in the future, the Ministry of Education can integrate such concepts into the education system as core curriculum.
768 Million People Hungry
Yet Over a Billion Tons of Food Wasted
Globally, food supplies are in fact sufficient. It is estimated that the average daily food supply per person amounts to nearly 3,000 calories, 85 grams of protein, and 90 grams of fat—well above what humans need for a healthy life. Hunger and malnutrition are mainly caused by poverty and unequal distribution, along with massive food loss and waste.
The UN predicts that the global population will reach 9 billion by 2050 and 10 billion by 2100. India is projected to surpass China next year as the world’s most populous country. Yet due to poor distribution, many people around the world still live below the poverty line, struggling for daily meals.
From 135 million in 2019, the number of people without adequate food has now risen to 597 million across 89 countries, with the majority living in poverty in Africa.
Ironically, even as 768 million people went hungry or malnourished in 2020, nearly 17% of global food (over a billion tons) is wasted each year. According to the 2021 Food Waste Index Report, in 2019 alone, 931 million tons of food ended up discarded by households, retailers, and restaurants.
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