Food Pacific Manufacturing Journal

Ample food, but too much waste

One-third of food for human consumption is lost or thrown away, which, if we were to scoop a cup of rice, would be like throwing out more than 5 tablespoons before we even put the contents of the cup on our plate.

In all, humankind wastes 1.3 billion tons of food each year. For the Ringier team in Düsseldorf for interpack 2011, this astonish¬ing figure was brought home more vividly as we walked through the SAVE FOOD Pavilion. The initiative focused on global food losses with the intention of highlighting, amongst other things, the contributions packaging can make towards safeguarding foods. The graphical presentations and interactive exhibits were enough to make us mindful about how we ate over the next few days.

Here is another figure for you: 2 billion. That's the number of people worldwide who are overweight – 400,000 of them obese. So, ironically, as thousands of us waste perfectly good food there are also thousands who consume more food than they should. Maybe some of us do both.

As Robert van Otterdijk, FAO Officer for SAVE FOOD, ex¬plains: "Food commodities are traded at an international market, and waste in one part of the world affects prices in other parts of the world. When food is thrown away in rich countries this affects the availability of food in poor countries."

He continues: "Since our natural resources such as land, water, and energy are limited, it is more effective to reduce food losses than to increase production."

And, yes, even as we recognise the existence globesity we also acknowledge that hunger and malnutrition remain very real.