I always had the impression that the discussion surrounding food waste revolved around the household; the culprits discarding excess food were the consumers living at home. However, it was interesting to watch Tristram Stuart, in his TED Talk titled \u201cThe Global Food Waste Scandal, discuss how the food industry perpetuates the food waste issue behind the scenes.<\/p>\n
The graph that Stuart introduces to the viewer demonstrates the staggering amount of surplus food each country is producing relative to the amount actually required to feed every citizen. While some surplus is acceptable to ensure a stable and nutritional diet for every citizen, Stuart illustrates the overabundance in food supply that exceeds this acceptable surplus amount. America has twice the amount of food required to feed the American people. Additionally, if we factor in edible crops that are fed to livestock, America likely has four times the amount of food it requires. As Stuart suggested, it doesn\u2019t quite make sense to simply increase global food production when many countries produce more than comfortable amounts of food.<\/p>\n
Stuart also discusses food waste along the industrial supply chain, citing that many crops with aesthetic blemishes are discarded and deemed unacceptable for supermarket shelves. Perhaps this is indicative of our culture and food habits, where we avoid eating food that\u2019s less than perfect. I\u2019ll admit I had this irrational mindset growing up, particularly with fruits that looked misshapen or bruised. However, we shouldn\u2019t be tossing out perfectly good food just because they lack visual appeal. Stuart mentions that Europe depends on importing soy from South America to feed livestock. While this contributes to global warming and deforestation, there\u2019s also the missed opportunity to recycle excess food back into feeding livestock rather than simply leaving it for anaerobic digesters. Taking into account the savings in land use and forest area, this method of disposing wasted food could save much more in CO2 emissions.<\/p>\n
Tristram Stuart: “The Global Food Waste Scandal”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I always had the impression that the discussion surrounding food waste revolved around the household; the culprits discarding excess food were the consumers living at home. However, it was interesting to watch Tristram Stuart, in his TED Talk titled \u201cThe Global Food Waste Scandal, discuss how the food industry perpetuates the food waste issue behind the scenes. The graph that… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":790,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions\/790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}