A Focus on Food Waste

Haylie Shipp

Today we're talking about an issue that's troubled me since I first heard the statistic over a decade ago: One third. It's estimated that as much as one third of all food produced globally is wasted.

Roger Thurow of the Hunger Solutions Institute at Auburn University...

“It is one of the great outrages in our world today that as much as one-third of all food is either lost at the farm, trade, or processing stages, or wasted, thrown away at the retail or consumer end. There was a dismal symmetry at work here – very dismal, troubling, tragic – that one-third number is about the same, be it in lower-income countries where about one-third of food crops never even make it out of the fields or off the farm and onto plates because of inadequate storage facilities, poor transport, a lack of markets, or in the higher-income countries, that one-third also applies.”

Think about all the food that gets thrown out...

“Higher-income countries like the United States, Europe, the richer precincts of the world, where about one-third of all processed food and food prepared for consumption is discarded, perhaps thrown away by stores for being past sell-by dates or by consumers who forget it in the back of a refrigerator or were too full to eat anymore.”

And the implications are more than just the annoyance of wasting money, Thurow says the consequences on the availability of food and on food prices are enormous, and they are some of the reasons why hunger and malnutrition continue in our world today.