Today, more than 30% of all the food produced in the world goes to waste. This means nearly 1.3 billion tons of fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, seafood, and grains that get spoiled or are thrown away in hotels, grocery stores, restaurants, schools or home kitchens. When we think that there are undernourished people on the planet who need this food every day, we take a step back and think what can be done to change this situation.
Apart from that, wasted food is an environmental concern as well. When we waste food, we also waste all the energy and water it takes to grow, harvest, transport, and package it.
As the world’s population continues to grow, our challenge should not be how to grow more food, but to feed more people while wasting less of what we already produce.
Here are a few tips to help you prevent food waste for a better environment:
• Plan ahead and buy only what you need.
• Use your freezer. While there are plenty of benefits to eating fresh food, frozen foods can be just as nutritious. They also stay edible for much longer. Cooking and freezing food—especially produce—before it goes bad is a great way to avoid having to toss it.
• Be creative with leftovers. Before you shop, use the food you already have. Websites like Big Oven, Supercook, and MyFridgeFood allow you to search for recipes based on ingredients already in your kitchen.
• Blend, bake or boil. Fruits and vegetables that are beyond ripe may not look pretty, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still taste delicious in recipes. Try using them to make sweet smoothies, bread, jams, sauces or soup stocks.
• Talk it up. Preventing food waste is the most effective way to shrink its impact on the planet. If we avoid producing food that we don’t eat, we can save the land, water, and energy that would have been used to make it. And awareness is a good first step.
11th Grade from Technological High School of Services “Sfântul Apostol Andrei” Ploiesti Romania