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

[Ridgerunner]

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.

It isn’t just restaurants. A lot of edible food is declared non human consumable at processing plants just because it’s overproduction. Once it’s so declared, it can’t enter the human food chain and can only go into pet food.

But there is also the distribution question. It’s one thing for restaurants or food processors to hold onto surplus food. It’s another to get it where it needs to go. Yes, a particular restaurant might establish contact with a local food bank, and perhaps should. But one has to ask how anything like that could become widespread.

Also, since restaurants are seemingly throwing away food that is prepared, and since nobody is likely to countenance giving anyone a half-eaten steak, one has to wonder just how much “throwaway-but-useable” food there really is at restaurants.

 

[SamH]

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.

Third world countries like Somalia waste nearly as much. Their ability (and willingness) to distribute food is hampered by internal strife. Warlords and petty bureaucrats control the destination of food shipments and divert them from their enemies.

icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/news-release/2012/somalia-news-2011-01-12.htm