What did you learn about dietary choices from using the footprint calculator? Now imagine that you could translate what you learned into an effective societal policy on food- what would it be? And how would this policy effect the need to alleviate world hunger?
925 million people on earth do not have enough to eat according to the FAO [Food and Agricultural Organization]. That's almost 1 in 7 inhabitants of our planet!
Food & Hunger >
Food in the Dumpsters
In 2014, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations conducted a study to see how much food is lost or wasted around the world (loss usually occurs in the beginning of the food chain during production and post harvest while waste happens at the consumer level). Their findings were shocking. About 1/3 of the food we should be using is wasted annually, that's about 2.8 trillion pounds of food! A lot of times, the food that gets thrown away is directly from the grocery store. Why? As produce gets bruised, close to expiration date, or past ripe, people don't buy them because they could spoil before their use at home. When the produce isn't bought, it goes to the garbage. In better cases, some food may go to food drives. Even in restaurants, the food that costumers don’t eat gets dumped behind closed doors. All in all, the loss and waste of food prevents us from feeding more people and costs us a lot of money. In an article by National Geographic, an American family of four loses an average of $1,484 on trashed foods. It wastes the amount of fuel, water, and l and that we use to produce these products that ultimately end up purposeless in a landfill. However, there is still a way to lessen this scale of global food waste. After the FAO gave 18,000 silos to farmers in Afghanistan, the levels of lost from 15-20% to less than 2%. This is a great first step to increasing the amount of food we actually use. Even restaurants are taking a stand! TGIF’s are now offering smaller portions and other businesses charge customers for leaving food on their plates. Next time you shop or order a huge portion size that you can’t finish, think about where it could end up. Read more on the article itself: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news … ce-ngfood/
I think that throwing out the food that's spoiling or not being consumed should instead be put into a compost bin. Restaurants in certain areas can have a specific, huge compost bin assigned to them, and a truck can come by weekly to pick up the compost just like a regular trash day. The compost can be used to fertilize local farms, making the food more nutritious without the chemicals.
The amount of food thrown away simply because they're a bit battered is unfortunate. Smaller portions on plates are just one step in reducing the amount of wasted food. Like Emma said, a compost bin is an excellent idea because it is both efficient and helpful when reducing the amount of wastes. Not only restaurants, but places such as schools can start a compost bin to help with this cause.