The Global Food Waste Scandal

Jennifer Gavidia

Jennifer Richardson

ENG 111/ ENF 3

30 October, 2015

The Global Food Waste Scandal

Author and Activist Tristram Stuart

This author describes the way that he started to investigate about the topic of food waste around the world. He comments that when he was 15 years old, he notice the problem that food waste caused , and by then he decided to buy pigs and fed them with all the waste that he found in school, restaurants and even in farms around his neighborhood , where they  garbage potatoes because its size and weight were not appropriate. This problem intrigue him to research on the subject. He started to spy behind some restaurants, where enormous quantities of food waste are made every day. In some occasions he asked in these places about the percentage of food that is voided, but none of them wanted to respond him. After many studies and write a book Tristram shows the analysis of percentage of food waste that are thrown around the world. Developed countries lead the first lists of food waste, this is due to the great demand for food requiring these countries, but that also have many nutritional requirements for export and consumption, if these foods do not have the necessary requirements are discarded of the market, some of these being even consumable by humans, are still discarded only because they don’t have the right shape or weight. However, many countries around the world lack from food, these are the undeveloped countries. Tristram understood that most rich countries have between three and four times the amount of food that their population needs to feed itself. A country like America has four times the amount of food that it needs. Therefore, the bigger and powerful a country is, the greater will be their food waste.

After seeing the talk of Tristram, I understood how important is to be aware of the problem that it abides by the waste of food. I really liked the illustration that he made with the public. He ask the audience how many of them throw away the crusts of the bread, and if anyone seen a supermarket or sandwich shop anywhere in the world that serves sandwiches with crusts on it? Many people of the public admitted to throwing away the crusts of the bread. This demonstrate how in small things humans wasted food, and in other countries with less resources of food, wishes’ to have what we are throwing away. Also, I liked how the author used a relaxed tone, precise and with a bit of humor that captivated the attention of the public. For me this issue is very important, and the talk helped me to understand what we can do to decrease the rates of food waste.