We waste so much of our food. Mostly in the developed world - people throw away food at an astounding rate. In my time here, I very rarely adhere to the "best before" date. These stuff are good even after a month of good storage. All these foods are thrown away in supermarkets. I saw a video on r/sustainability of a Dunkin'Donuts worker just flipping all the unsold PERFECTLY GOOD donuts into the dumpsters at the end of the day. I mean, donate this food to homeless people or people who are on food stamps.
Let me tell you about my personal experience in coming face to face with this food waste issue. For years since I've been here, I've had many friends who partook in this practice called 'dumpster diving'. Now, if you pictured people literally diving into dumpsters to get food, that's exactly how it looks like - for the most part. I've been to many lunches made from this so-called rescued food but I didn't partake in this action until 4 years into my studies here. And what I saw left me quite shocked to say the least. So much good food which we were able to make a proper meal for over 10 people. And we didn't even collect all the food waste. The worst thing which we collected, which I would understand why the people would throw it away was bread which would go hard if the bakery kept it for another day. Other than that, there were so many veggies and fruit which were edible. People, we need to stop having this mentality where we are afraid to buy food which looks ugly. Why do we have to treat the food we eat in a superficial way? You're going to cut it up anyway. A small dimple on a tomato? Cut that part off, it isn’t going to kill you to do that! A few leaves gone yellowish on a cabbage? Pluck them out and use the rest! We've been conditioned for some reason to not use food which even LOOKS a weird shape. Tough luck. Just like humans, your food come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. So, it’s time to wake up and accept the realities of nature. And this is one of the main reasons why shops, especially the small grocery stores, have to get rid of their food at the end of the day.
Yes, this was all dumpster dived!
If we shift the lens to developing nations, it’s mostly a different story. Of course, consumers here aren’t Scot free either and they maybe slowly conditioned to look for pretty fruits too. But there is another aspect to consider in many developing nations and that is the problem of infrastructure – for example, lack of proper refrigerated storage and poor road networks. Part of the reason for this is the lack of access to reliable energy sources. This results in massive losses of food in the early supply chain right after the harvest. What does this mean in terms of numbers? 40% of food is lost before it even gets to the shops.
Due to current legal issues, leftover food from supermarkets, restaurants and hotels, even though they are perfectly good to eat, cannot be given away. This is something that would need careful legislative change so that the safety and quality of the food is ensured WHILE reducing the food wasted in this manner. Now imagine if there was a distribution network so that all of this food waste -most of which is perfect by the way - can be given to people who need it the most at a cheap price if not free. Sure, this might not last a trip from Europe to the poorest countries in the world but even in developed nations, there are homeless people and donations are greatly appreciated to the people living without access to social safety nets or ample access to food. If this much is wasted at the store in developed nations, a similar situation can be expected in developing nations. In my experience, there's a large amount of wasted food, especially in the central markets. At least the smell whenever I passed the back end of the central market in Kandy, where I come from, told me that. So instead of piling food which is not sold that day and leaving it to rot, why can't we create an alternative distribution network to get this food to the right places? As a nation dependant on food imports, Sri Lanka for example, there are opportunities to find alternatives to distribute the food we have, but no, right now we are throwing it away. I wonder if shocks like the COVID19 pandemic will make people see things different now, since there is a food crisis, and the prices of staples are really high, and some products are limited. Finding solutions to reduce food waste goes hand in hand with food self-sufficiency.
So why is this topic so important to discuss? Food security is not just about producing MORE food. We already have more than enough food to feed everyone in this world. But it’s just distributed unequally and there are massive amounts of food wasted along the process. Be it post-harvest, during distribution or post-consumer. One of the reasons for this food issue is that in some parts of the world, people think they are entitled to eat however much they want to eat. This not only could lead to two things – either you throw food away from the plate because you bought too much and the other, but you also become sick and put a burden on the public health system. I think this is a tough question but it’s something that we need to ask if we are to move towards a sustainable form of livelihood. Are we entitled to eat how much ever we want to eat? With most of the world’s consumption coming from the most affluent minority, this is something worth thinking about. Just like when it comes to other “materialistic stuff”, consumerism also applies to food. It’s also important to consider that developing nations are starting to follow this trend, with consumerism when it comes to food. I just want to put that point out there. Maybe we can have a discussion about this at some point.
It is true that in some parts of the world, the production of food can be improved by better agricultural practices and proper irrigation. But one major reason we don’t need to produce more food is limited resources. Where are we going to get the land for it? We cannot afford to simply destroy more forests and make space for agriculture, neither can we make more space for pastures. This is the reason why we can’t put the blame on farmers and governments for NOT producing enough.
Now that we’re coming to the end of this post, let’s talk about what we can do and what is happening around the world. One thing we CAN do is to put pressure on the legislature to stop the wastage of perfectly good food in for example, hotels and supermarkets. Another thing we can work on is to improve the traceability of food from farm to table. How can this be done? By using blockchain technology (for purposes other than bitcoin mining) which can actually save us! This allows data from farmers, distribution companies and retailers to be linked. This way, each product on a supermarket shelf can be tracked to its source. But wait, there’s more good news! There is a group of scientists studying developing sensors which change colour depending on the freshness of the food. Some change colour based on exposed temperatures, some change colour after the food packaging has been opened and has been exposed for a certain amount of time. Another developed by Dr Rona Chandrawati and colleagues from UNSW, detects the concentration of ammonia in meat or lactic acid in milk. These turn from blue to purple when the food is spoilt.
So yes, while the glaring problem of food waste exists in the pre-consumer stage, we as consumers also have to be more conscious of how we shop, how much we shop and how we use the food we buy. This is something we do have a lot of control over and can send these signals upstream. However, there are legal blind spots when it comes to dealing with the inevitable waste which is generated which should be addressed. There is good progress on the horizon which allows us to keep track of the freshness of food, thus giving consumers more transparency when making shopping decisions and giving supermarkets and the like more information on when their food is truly ready to be waste.
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