Food waste, it effects and solutions.

Introduction

In recent years food waste has become a serious phenomenon attracting the attention of scientist, farmers, consumers and activists alike. It has been termed as a global paradox regarding the manner in which emphasis is put on agriculture to improve food security and then a third of all the food produced ends up as waste. This is according to FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations) report in 2003 indicating that the food waste globally sums to one-third of the total food produced for human consumption, about 1.6 billion tons a year [1].

Food waste as defined by BFCN (Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition) is the food losses that occur during industrial processing, distribution and consumption of food. Food waste is becoming a huge concern in both economic, social and environmental sector.

Causes of food waste

Some of the causes of food waste are

· Lack of planning appropriately, this is one of the top contributors of food waste on the consumers part. People buy a lot of food without planning on how and when the food will be prepared for consumption, with contemporary schedules of work and appointments, people therefore tend to change the food preparation plans or fail to remember using it on time.

· Purchase and preparation of too much food. Most of the time, food is also wasted

because of purchasing or preparing too much.

· Errors in industrial processing and keeping up with food safety policies. Another biggest driving factor for food waste is the food protocol on food safety. The food safety protocols give no room for error in industrial processing or any other compromise that diminish quality of the food products. As such, the confusions and errors during industrial processing of food mean that all food items that don’t meet the set standard are wasted [2].

Effects of food waste

Some of the effects of food waste are lost of biodiversity, wastage of the 1/3 of the world fertile land areas, Increased carbon footprint and the acceleration of climate change, economic consequences, lost of time, energy and resources.

Solutions of food waste

The problem of food waste can be solve by balancing food production with demand, bettering food harvesting, storage, processing and distribution process, food waste reduction initiatives, consumers to buy and prepare food with a plan and food recycling [3]

Bibliography

[1]

J. M. Dalzell, "food industry snd the enviroment," 200.

[2]

J. Y. Kim, "Food waste- a bigger problem than you thought," 2014.

[3]

J. Jowit, "Call to use leftover and cut food waste," The guardian, 2015.