Big Waist and Big Waste

In a world where vast populations face a daily struggle with chronic persistent hunger, the United States has a massive (pun clearly intended) weight problem. If you visit the Weight-control Information Network on the National Institutes of Health Website or the Centers for Disease Control site, you will learn that 35.7% of Americans are actually obese, two-thirds of adult Americans are overweight (including obesity), and one third of children between age six and nineteen are overweight (half of those obese). And half the food grown in the United States never gets consumed. The statistics for many Western nations track our own, although we tend to be on the extreme “heavy” end of comparisons.

Looking at other resources used in food production, every year worldwide 19.4 trillion cubic feet of our dwindling fresh water supplies are used to produce food crops that don’t make it to the dining room table. Almost two and a quarter billion tons of food are wasted. The British Institution of Mechanical Engineers recently issued a report, Global Food; Waste Not Want Not, which provides a litany of such wasteful practices. The study gives you statistics that are shocking but not surprising, and notes other practices that would be laughable if not for starving millions in third world nations. Like 30% of vegetables in the UK never get harvested because they don’t look good.

In a recent BBC interview, Dr Tim Fox (one of the authors) said, “The amount of food wasted and lost around the world is staggering. This is food that could be used to feed the world’s growing population - as well as those in hunger today…It is also an unnecessary waste of the land, water and energy resources that were used in the production, processing and distribution of this food.

“The reasons for this situation range from poor engineering and agricultural practices, inadequate transport and storage infrastructure through to supermarkets demanding cosmetically perfect foodstuffs and encouraging consumers to overbuy through buy-one-get-one-free offers… If you're in the developing world, then the losses are in the early part of the food supply chain, so between the field and the marketplace… In the mature, developed economies the waste is really down to poor marketing practices and consumer behavior.”

The January 10^th, BBC.co.uk continues: “The United Nations predicts there will be an extra three billion mouths to feed by 2075 as the global population swells to 9.5 billion… Dr Fox added: ‘As water, land and energy resources come under increasing pressure from competing human demands, engineers have a crucial role to play in preventing food loss and waste by developing more efficient ways of growing, transporting and storing foods… ‘But in order for this to happen governments, development agencies and organisation like the UN must work together to help change people's mindsets on waste and discourage wasteful practices by farmers, food producers, supermarkets and consumers.’” Go to your refrigerator and look inside. What are you going to throw away… sooner or later? How did it get there? And is there anything that you can do to reduce that waste?

I’m Peter Dekom, and massive (in a good way) results often come from massive individual action.