Over one billion tonnes of food wasted a year - UN

[Feuer Frei!]

AROUND a third of the food produced in the world every year - about 1.18 billion tonnes - gets lost or wasted, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says. "Given the limited availability of natural resources it is more effective to reduce food losses than increase food production in order to feed a growing world population," the FAO said in a report released today.
The FAO said the amount of food lost or wasted every year is equivalent to more than half of the world's annual cereals crop.
Some 925 million people around the world suffer from hunger.
The report said that the problem in the developing world was mainly food losses - through, for example, crop failures and poor infrastructure.
In industrialised countries, the issue is more about "retailers and consumers throwing perfectly edible foodstuffs into the trash".
The report found that in Europe and North America consumers wasted between 95 and 115 kilograms of food every year.
The report found that in the retail industry there was an "over-emphasis on appearance". "Surveys show that consumers are willing to buy produce not meeting appearance standards as long as it is safe and tastes good," it said.
"Consumers in rich countries are generally encouraged to buy more food than they need," the FAO said, giving as an example oversized ready-to-eat meals produced by the food industry and fixed-price buffets in restaurants.
The data was contained in a report commissioned by the FAO from the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology for "Save Food!" - a conference being held in Germany later this month.


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Food wastage! I hate it.
I manage a restaurant, have done so for most of my life, and i see a lot of wastage every day. By customers who's eyes are bigger than their stomachs. I've seen food come back that has had maybe a bite or two taken out of a steak or Chicken and the rest, along with untouched side dishes, and i just shake my head. Makes me angry that.
And no, it's not because the food is bad either.