Half of world's food going to waste, study finds

[Linda_Marie]

Half of world’s food going to waste, study finds

The UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers, which carried out the study, says the waste is caused by poor storage, strict sell-by dates, bulk offers, and consumer fussiness.

The report says half of the food purchased in Europe and the US is thrown away after it is bought.

The Institution’s engineering director Dr Colin Brown says the issue of food wastage is increasingly important as the planet’s population heads towards a predicted 9.5 billion people.

“Somewhere between 30 and up to 50 per cent of all food is wasted between it being grown, being harvested, transported and eventually us eating it – in that whole process coming up to half of it doesn’t actually get eaten,” he said.

He says a more efficient food production and distribution system would provide enough food for the planet’s growing population.

 

[Joe_5859]

I guess if half the food is wasted, that means earth could presently sutain twice the population.

 

[triumphguy]

I guess if half the food is wasted, that means earth could presently sutain twice the population.

And as we’d all be closer together transportation wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

 

[JoanREDirector]

What do you mean - wasting food?

You see an apple tree in a backyard in the late fall, perfectly good nutritious apples litter the ground. They could feed a village in the Sahara or hundreds of people in an urban slum in Brazil.

You walk down the same street, big pumpkins loaded with vitamins and calories moulder on front porches. A handful of cooked pumpkin could supply the needs for vitamin A and fibre for an inner city kid for a day.

The problem is harvesting the food, preserving the food, and delivering it to those who need it … and want it. The slum dweller would rather have a candy bar than half a cup of mashed pumpkin and so would you.

I’m an old farm woman and let me tell you. World hunger is a complicated subject. I’m also a volunteer in a food bank and one thing I know. You can lead a client to brown rice and collard greens, but you can’t make 'em eat it.

 

[InJesusItrust]

Well, I was born and raised in the West, but have parents who come from a developing country. Something that my father did not like was when people threw food in the trash–food that was not spoiled. He would rather you only be served as much as you eat.

Now, in another discussion board, someone posted a story about a restaurant throwing leftovers and extra food in the trash. They even laced it with chemicals to make it inedible so that homeless people would not hang around the restaurant after hours.

 

[Holly3278]

Well, I was born and raised in the West, but have parents who come from a developing country. Something that my father did not like was when people threw food in the trash–food that was not spoiled. He would rather you only be served as much as you eat.

Now, in another discussion board, someone posted a story about a restaurant throwing leftovers and extra food in the trash. They even laced it with chemicals to make it inedible so that homeless people would not hang around the restaurant after hours.

What that restaurant is doing is heartless and cruel. They should be ashamed of themselves and deeply so. What they ought to be doing is letting the homeless come in just after they have closed and let them eat what is left of the food. Either that or they could package it and then take it to a soup kitchen to be served to the homeless and hungry. Anything but throw it in the trash and then on top of that lace it with chemicals so it is useful to any poor homeless person who must search through garbage bins just to get a bite to eat!

 

[InJesusItrust]

Maybe it was a supermarket or grocery store. I am googling it but unable to find it. It was some store/restaurant in the US. Maybe it was some worker who was complaining about it and not a news article, but I remember that it was discussed quite well on a discussion board about a year ago.

I think the reasoning was that if you let them eat for free they will constantly try to get a free meal or ruin the environment for customers. Rational self-interest alone is not a good way to make moral decisions.

To be fair one person wrote that the food would have been expired and they would not want to be responsible for someone getting sick. Others wondered why the business let food get expired rather than give it to the poor before it got to the point where they threw it away.

 

[Ridgerunner]

What that restaurant is doing is heartless and cruel. They should be ashamed of themselves and deeply so. What they ought to be doing is letting the homeless come in just after they have closed and let them eat what is left of the food. Either that or they could package it and then take it to a soup kitchen to be served to the homeless and hungry. Anything but throw it in the trash and then on top of that lace it with chemicals so it is useful to any poor homeless person who must search through garbage bins just to get a bite to eat!

If restaurants gave the leftover food to the hungry, government would be all over them, fine them, prosecute them and perhaps shut them down. I don’t know whether some governmental (fed or state or local) requires them to “denature” the food they throw away, but since it costs money and time to do it, that would be my guess.

 

[Joe_5859]

If restaurants gave the leftover food to the hungry, government would be all over them, fine them, prosecute them and perhaps shut them down. I don’t know whether some governmental (fed or state or local) requires them to “denature” the food they throw away, but since it costs money and time to do it, that would be my guess.

Perhaps it depends on the restaurant, but I know some do give away leftover food. Panera does that. Although I’m sure it’s simpler to do with bread than with other food items.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Maybe it was a supermarket or grocery store. I am googling it but unable to find it. It was some store/restaurant in the US. Maybe it was some worker who was complaining about it and not a news article, but I remember that it was discussed quite well on a discussion board about a year ago.

I think the reasoning was that if you let them eat for free they will constantly try to get a free meal or ruin the environment for customers. Rational self-interest alone is not a good way to make moral decisions.

To be fair one person wrote that the food would have been expired and they would not want to be responsible for someone getting sick. Others wondered why the business let food get expired rather than give it to the poor before it got to the point where they threw it away.

I think liability is a part of it. I also think regulation is a part of it.

Years ago, I struck a bargain with a poor fellow who lived in the country. He was able to buy some baby pigs for next to nothing and asked if he could borrow the money from me. I asked him how he was going to pay for their feed while he raised them, but he didn’t know. I then suggested that I pay for the pigs and all of the “mill feed” needed. I would pay for the butchering. He would provide the labor. He suggested to me that he could keep the feed cost down by going around to the rear of supermarkets and gathering up the fruit and vegetables they throw away. He said it was a lot.

So we did that. He had an old pickup truck and on his way back from his janitorial job, he would load up those fruits and vegetables and feed them to the pigs. It was an interesting sight; pickup loads of apples, peaches, cabbages, bananas, tomatoes, carrots, on and on and on. Most of it I wouldn’t have hesitated to eat myself, and the pigs certainly didn’t. I did provide the “mill feed” and paid for the butchering and we split the meat.

Best pork I ever had, before or since.

But ominously, toward the end of the enterprise the supermarkets forbade people like him going dumpster diving. They didn’t want to be held responsible for any injury he might sustain and didn’t want the health dept to think they were encouraging human use of wilted, spoiled, etc, produce.

Another story. A friend of mine is a very successful entrepreneur in the “secondary products” industry. He buys truckloads upon truckloads of the poultry parts nobody will buy; some of it perfectly good. Whole tankers full of chicken livers; wing tips, tails, necks, backs, all the stuff people won’t buy. He turns it into pet food.

One day he had the idea to make a powder out of that stuff that was a perfect blend of meat, fat, bone, cartilage, all perfectly cooked and all USDA inspected. He devised a way to pack it in cans. His idea was to GIVE it away in poor countries. It was so packed with nutrients that just putting it on some starchy food or in a soup would result in a good-tasting, incredibly nutritious food. His thought was to do it through charitable agencies and missionaries of every kind…come one come all.

But the government wouldn’t allow him to ship it. Why? Because it would compete with food producers in those countries and their governments raised a fuss about it. Besides, once it left the processing plants from where he got the parts, it was, by law, declared “not human consumable” by the USDA here because poultry products are classified as “human consumable” or “not human consumable” at the end of the processing/packaging line at the processing plant. Once something passes that line, the government will never allow it to be shipped as a human-consumable product.

So, it all goes to dogs and cats.

A real irony here is that chicken feet can’t enter the human food chain in the U.S. They are considered irredeemably contaminated. But in the Far East, they are considered a delicacy and they don’t care. So the U.S. government allows the feet to be frozen and packed into sealed containers here at the processing plants and shipped directly to the Far East, not to be reopened until they arrive there.

Another Far Eastern delicacy you can’t sell here is pig anuses. They are packed here in pork plants, sealed and shipped directly overseas. Odd as it may seem, the price (several years ago when I saw them doing it) was $40/pound BEFORE the cost of shipping, and the pork plants could sell all they could produce.

But chicken powder for poor people in the third world? Noooooo.

The same guy is now also buying “reject potatoes” and turning it into powder for pet food. There’s no really good reason people couldn’t eat it, but that’s not where it goes. It’s made of bruised, cut, misshapen or too-small potatoes. Potatoes are very nutritious, but people don’t get to eat those kinds of potatoes.

 

[Joe_5859]

I think liability is a part of it. I also think regulation is a part of it.

Years ago, I struck a bargain with a poor fellow who lived in the country. He was able to buy some baby pigs for next to nothing and asked if he could borrow the money from me. I asked him how he was going to pay for their feed while he raised them, but he didn’t know. I then suggested that I pay for the pigs and all of the “mill feed” needed. I would pay for the butchering. He would provide the labor. He suggested to me that he could keep the feed cost down by going around to the rear of supermarkets and gathering up the fruit and vegetables they throw away. He said it was a lot.

So we did that. He had an old pickup truck and on his way back from his janitorial job, he would load up those fruits and vegetables and feed them to the pigs. It was an interesting sight; pickup loads of apples, peaches, cabbages, bananas, tomatoes, carrots, on and on and on. Most of it I wouldn’t have hesitated to eat myself, and the pigs certainly didn’t. I did provide the “mill feed” and paid for the butchering and we split the meat.

Best pork I ever had, before or since.

But ominously, toward the end of the enterprise the supermarkets forbade people like him going dumpster diving. They didn’t want to be held responsible for any injury he might sustain and didn’t want the health dept to think they were encouraging human use of wilted, spoiled, etc, produce.

Another story. A friend of mine is a very successful entrepreneur in the “secondary products” industry. He buys truckloads upon truckloads of the poultry parts nobody will buy; some of it perfectly good. Whole tankers full of chicken livers; wing tips, tails, necks, backs, all the stuff people won’t buy. He turns it into pet food.

One day he had the idea to make a powder out of that stuff that was a perfect blend of meat, fat, bone, cartilage, all perfectly cooked and all USDA inspected. He devised a way to pack it in cans. His idea was to GIVE it away in poor countries. It was so packed with nutrients that just putting it on some starchy food or in a soup would result in a good-tasting, incredibly nutritious food. His thought was to do it through charitable agencies and missionaries of every kind…come one come all.

But the government wouldn’t allow him to ship it. Why? Because it would compete with food producers in those countries and their governments raised a fuss about it. Besides, once it left the processing plants from where he got the parts, it was, by law, declared “not human consumable” by the USDA here because poultry products are classified as “human consumable” or “not human consumable” at the end of the processing/packaging line at the processing plant. Once something passes that line, the government will never allow it to be shipped as a human-consumable product.

So, it all goes to dogs and cats.

A real irony here is that chicken feet can’t enter the human food chain in the U.S. They are considered irredeemably contaminated. But in the Far East, they are considered a delicacy and they don’t care. So the U.S. government allows the feet to be frozen and packed into sealed containers here at the processing plants and shipped directly to the Far East, not to be reopened until they arrive there.

Another Far Eastern delicacy you can’t sell here is pig anuses. They are packed here in pork plants, sealed and shipped directly overseas. Odd as it may seem, the price (several years ago when I saw them doing it) was $40/pound BEFORE the cost of shipping, and the pork plants could sell all they could produce.

But chicken powder for poor people in the third world? Noooooo.

The same guy is now also buying “reject potatoes” and turning it into powder for pet food. There’s no really good reason people couldn’t eat it, but that’s not where it goes. It’s made of bruised, cut, misshapen or too-small potatoes. Potatoes are very nutritious, but people don’t get to eat those kinds of potatoes.

You always have good stories to share, Ridgerunner. Thanks! That’s really interesting.

 

[Graubo3]

Best pork I ever had, before or since.

Thanks alot, I am hungry for bacon now.

But the government wouldn’t allow him to ship it. Why? Because it would compete with food producers in those countries and their governments raised a fuss about it. Besides, once it left the processing plants from where he got the parts, it was, by law, declared “not human consumable” by the USDA here because poultry products are classified as “human consumable” or “not human consumable” at the end of the processing/packaging line at the processing plant. Once something passes that line, the government will never allow it to be shipped as a human-consumable product.

By controlling food distribution you can control people.

 

[qui_est_ce]

What do you mean - wasting food?

You see an apple tree in a backyard in the late fall, perfectly good nutritious apples litter the ground. They could feed a village in the Sahara or hundreds of people in an urban slum in Brazil.

You walk down the same street, big pumpkins loaded with vitamins and calories moulder on front porches. A handful of cooked pumpkin could supply the needs for vitamin A and fibre for an inner city kid for a day.

The problem is harvesting the food, preserving the food, and delivering it to those who need it … and want it. The slum dweller would rather have a candy bar than half a cup of mashed pumpkin and so would you.

I’m an old farm woman and let me tell you. World hunger is a complicated subject. I’m also a volunteer in a food bank and one thing I know. You can lead a client to brown rice and collard greens, but you can’t make 'em eat it.

 

[qui_est_ce]

You always have good stories to share, Ridgerunner. Thanks! That’s really interesting.

I think in real life he must be a story teller!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think in real life he must be a story teller!

Thanks. But the reality is that I have just been around awhile. But I’ll admit, I love a good story, and a person hears a lot of them if he lives long enough.

 

[Pug]

A real irony here is that chicken feet can’t enter the human food chain in the U.S. They are considered irredeemably contaminated.

Eh? I can buy them at the local store. Bundles of them. Did this just change since the last time I looked for them? They aren’t the cheapest part of the chicken, either.

 

[stinkcat_14]

One thing that I miss from my graduate school days was that some of the alternative animal parts were pretty good. When I lived in a poor neighborhood, finding beef hearts for 99 cents a pound was a real treat. Nowdays in my higher income town I never see that on sale.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Eh? I can buy them at the local store. Bundles of them. Did this just change since the last time I looked for them? They aren’t the cheapest part of the chicken, either.

Perhaps my understanding is out of date, then.

Possibly they are now considered redeemable, but at one time they weren’t and traffic in them was clandestine. And I understand they are expensive in the Far East where most of them go.

 

[Pug]

Perhaps my understanding is out of date, then.

Possibly they are now considered redeemable, but at one time they weren’t and traffic in them was clandestine. And I understand they are expensive in the Far East where most of them go.

Maybe some of our immigrant population worked to get them back. I get them in an ethnic market. I tried to google it, and got something from 2005, so I bet you are right that it was illegal for awhile.

That they are expensive in the East explains why the ones that I’ve seen cost so much here.

 

[Holly3278]

If restaurants gave the leftover food to the hungry, government would be all over them, fine them, prosecute them and perhaps shut them down. I don’t know whether some governmental (fed or state or local) requires them to “denature” the food they throw away, but since it costs money and time to do it, that would be my guess.

Then something needs to change within the government. We need to change the laws and such if the laws would prohibit it. It is ridiculous that restaurants throw so much food away when it could be given to the homeless and other hungry people.