I had to reach back to a few weeks ago to remember what lesson 5 was about and then I remembered the Ted Talk by Tristram Stuart titled the Global food Waste Scandal. During his talk he put in perspective the amount of food that we actually do waste. I always knew that we wasted food as a country, but for some reason I thought other countries weren’t nearly as bad as us. Poor and rich countries alike waste food on a terrible scale. This reminded me of my first teenage job. I used to work at a grocery store, we used to throw away unsold deli items, seafood, produce etc.Then, I wasn’t aware of the implications, I was simply doing my job. As an adult, while spending time in Afghanistan, I was tasked for a week with cleaning the chow hall. We had to throw all of the uneaten food away, when there are literally starving families right outside of the compound that I worked in. This time I was more aware of the implications, but because of my position, I was not allowed to do anything about it. Basically, we need to stop wasting food, and dispose of it properly, and start eating those weird shaped apples and oranges, instead of throwing them away. Imagine how much food we could save…or at the very least, feed it to the pigs.
I really enjoyed reading your post and your personal experience working in a grocery store and spending time in Afghanistan. I think those moments helped to open your eyes to the inefficiencies in the food system. Tristram Stuart really helps to reveal the nature of food waste, not necessarily in the fact that households and restaurants wasting good food, but more importantly he exposes the issues higher up in the food system. Grocery stores throw out edible food that do not fit the market requirements of aesthetics alone and thousands of acres of food are unharvested for the same reason. I think his behind the scenes account also raise questions of the use of agricultural hormones, additives, colorings, and other chemicals to enhance the look of produce.