Food Waste Fervour

Julian Baggini provides an interesting 'long read' on the problem of food wastage. He points out that "every informed observer agrees that food waste and loss must be eliminated, if we are to feed all humans." Traditional societies, like the Maasai of Tanzania, are outraged at even the thought of food waste. When it occurs in such societies, it's very obvious to the group who is the culprit. Folk living in the 'Western world', however, are generally unaware of the scale of food wastage. Actually, if food loss and waste were a country, it would be the third biggest source of greenhouse gas emisions on the planet. Producers, consumers and supermarkets are all at fault. Producers reject proportions of their output. Consumers generally cook too much and are often unclear about what can be safely stored and used later. Supermarkets want people to buy as much as possible. This is reflected in their packaging. The standard Supermarket BOGOF (buy one, get one free), has now mutated into 'buy three, pay for two, waste one'. Baggini notes that supermarkets think empty shelves are a turn off. They prefer to have left over stock, rather that risk running out. Even schemes like the food-waste app 'Too Good to Go' are in danger of becoming 'greenwash'. In Denmark, such schemes, offer 'magic bags' containing random collections of leftover food items. Supermarkets and bakeries now admit they are using it as a 'sales channel', to shift more product. They over-order to fill the bags (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/08/the-scandal-of-food-waste-and-how-we-can-stop-it). Stopping food waste, however, isn't just about feeding more people. As noted earlier, food that's not consumed currently generates 8-10% of annual total greenhouse gas emissions. We really don't want to accelerate climate change in such a useless process. The land turned over to cultivation/animal husbandry is also already enormous. This increases biodiversity loss and threatens the planet's fragile ecology. It would actually be beneficial to reduce the land needed for cultivation. This could be facilitated by reducing food wastage. There's no point in producing food that isn't going to be consumed!