This is a 3-part series covering food waste around the world and what people in the media and in businesses are doing to eliminate the large amount of waste.
Strolling through the brightly lit aisles, you find yourself indulging in the deliciously laid out produce. Your eye distinctly draws to the perfectly rounded apples, the crisp non-bruised lettuce. All of our first instincts are to right away only pick the perfect ones, like if there are any imperfections on our food it is instantaneously labeled as inedible.
In places around the world, just seeing an apple bruised and covered with inadequacies is a 5 star meal. Here in the United States, food that is inadequate in the eyes of the choosers gets left on the stands and eventually is thrown out. Some people around the world are starting to realize this problem and are doing something about it. The Food Network aired a show called “The Big Waste” that had top chefs tackle the issue and create an amazing multi-course meal only with food that was planned on being thrown out.
Here are two very enlightening infographics courtesy of rhythms.org and leahwalterscreative.com. These infographics lay out hard facts about the world and its amount of food waste.
This first infographic displays the facts about food waste in both the US and the UK.
This infographic displays statistics about food waste and food insecurity.
No matter where you live around the world, it’s important to realize the amount of food that goes to waste in markets and grocery stores. In the next article in this series, we will discuss what the Food Network is doing to make this issue more aware to the public and what we can do to lower the large amount of food waste.
