Food to Trash.
Food , basic source of our life , has great journey from soil to morsels. Nature facilitate it to develop/ grow from cells/ beans to digestible and edible feed for human.
A UNO report shocked me and may be everyone that human wasting 1.5 billion tons food each year. Almost 18% of the Total produced food goes in trashes each year. It is too much especially when we see tons of people dying in hunger, millions of kids have low nutritional problems and thousands of people searching food from waste bins.
Can we imagine how much effort by producers, effort by labours , investment and cost of transportation has these food which we throw unmercifully in trashes. Then it is against the spirituality, moral values and beliefs that we purposely or in ignorance waste the food.
There can be lot of issues and reasons behind the our actions of wasting food. But in Ready to eat food ( cooked, semi cooked and ready to Cook) the common reasons are ,
- Over purchasing: people with enough money in pocket has this habit that they didn't buy food as per requirement only. They will search top best but more then need food. They feel ashame on low quantity buying with ego that what people will say.
- Over ordering: again here we do mistake, over ordering mostly happen in take away, dine in restaurants. Most of people order more dishes and more then actual need which cause the Left over in dishes. That leftovers mostly went in trashes.
- Over taken: people place too much food in their plates to east. Such things happen in gatherings like wedding, funeral and Charity functions where most of invited people attack on food like they never seen food earlier. Over taken food ultimately cause the wastage.
Raw food wastage.
Here lot of factors again we can see that we waste the food by our own neglance. Major reasons behind this are ,
- Collection: we waste around 7-8 % food in process of collection. Crops from field, fruit from garden and raw food like rice , pulses and Suger from factories we fails to adopt the latest technology to minimize the lose of food.
- Transportation: another reason of lose is unhealthy way of transportation the food from place to place. From field to grain market and from stores to retailers we loose food.
- Storage: Around 5-6% food wasted in process of storage. Especially vegetables and fruits mishandling in storage process leading in lose of food.
- Processing : in lot of countries very less facilities can found to process the food, or authorities are not interested in safe them. Like in my homeland huge number of Dates gardening can be found and millions of tons Dates we get each year but unfortunately there is no processing plants to preserve it / safe it for long time or export it. So lot of , almost 50% of total production went to Ash each year.
Now what we can do individually, because storage, transportation, collection is not in our hands. So what is in our hand to safe the food or at least not to be part of wasters. We must ,
Change the habits.
Our eating/ taking/ serving style must be changed. We must take only that portion of food which we can eat easily. We must learn how to eat in portions instead of taking lot of food in plates. Same in ordering, we should order that quantity which we can eat. Also do one more practice that ask from waiter a help to pack the leftovers of your food. Pack it for your own or give it free to any needful person. At least we will save food from going to trash. We should adopt the healthier habits of eating/ taking/ drinking.
Awareness campaign.
NGOs, government, social media should launch a brutal campaign against food lose. Let people aware that how the food is precious and how much it costs to reach on your plate. Each food must be labeled by production date and this labeling will ensure the food used before the date , stores in FIFO policy and avoid from over stacking.
Let's save food with commitment and become a source to feed a hungry stomach.
That's all for today, like upvote and leave comment for feedback.
Cheers,
Amjad.
