Today, we are celebrating World Food Day and, as usual, the focus then is on issues such as food safety (e.g., yesterday a seminar took place on efficiency of meat official controls - How to make meat official controls work for all?) and food waste. It has been calculated that around a third of food is wasted globally (1.3 billion tons, with 90 million tones in Europe), either due to lack of awareness, lack of shopping planning, lack of knowledge how to use leftovers, or inadequate storage, packaging, overproduction, stock management inefficiencies, etc. (Commission underlines commitment to reducing food waste in Europe) At the moment, the European Commission is debating introduction of specific action plans that would reduce food waste (e.g., date labelling, donation of surplus food to food banks, short food supply chains).
The last year's horse meat scandal and the increasing rates on obesity turned some heads towards the subject of food quality, as well (Calling for quality, not just quantity). While many people in the world still struggle to find enough food, others may have sufficient food but still suffer from malnutrition due to improper diet.
Since Europeans are not the only ones wasting food and it is the World Food Day, it is worth it to listen to this TEDx talk of how to cut food waste in the US, by Peter Lehner.
