Global food waste - TED Talk

Hello, i want to bring to your attention an issue that has not been discussed as much as it should be and i am talking about the waste of food.

Western countries throw out nearly half of their food, not because it’s inedible -- but because it doesn’t look appealing. Tristram Stuart delves into the shocking data of wasted food, calling for a more responsible use of global resources.

And the Ted Talk: TED

I hope you enjoy it and this will make you realize that we shouldn't buy more than we consume.

Nobody interested in this issue? Oh well ...

I've been guilty of throwing out food before it went bad. Since quitting my salaried job to start my own business I've had to cut back on groceries and now only buy the essentials. My fridge always looks bare but I have learned to eat all my food now.

It's shocking to know how much food we waste.

reply to post by AlexIR


I've heard we waste upwards of 40-50% of our food supply, with something like 90% of the material in landfills being biodegradable foods locked up in plastic garbage bags. It's an absolute travesty.

I enjoyed the talk, and it certainly is one of the biggest and most pressing (not to mention overlooked) problems we face today, but I thought he came up short in the possible solutions category.

In addition to pigs, chickens make for incredible organic waste disposals. I think they're a little easier to manage than pigs, and more and more municipalities are allowing for "backyard chickens" - which should almost be a requirement for every household, since they recycle kitchen scraps so well. Plus, they convert those scraps to tasty and nutritious eggs, much moreso than you'll get from factory farmed chickens. Here's a comparison of some of the nutrient differences between the two:

1/3 less cholesterol than commercial eggs
1/4 less saturated fat
2/3 more vitamin A
2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
7 times more beta carotene
www.motherearthnews.com...
www.polyfaceyum.com...

Another great, and perhaps the most important, option is composting. Composting recycles the nutrients and turns those foods back into incredible, slow-release soil amendments (which are much better than synthetic fertilizers). In fact, compost helps to actively build soils, something we drastically need to do if we want to keep growing food at all in this country and around the world in general:

'Slow, insidious' soil erosion threatens human health
www.news.cornell.edu...

Composting is easy to do at home, and there are plenty of resources on the internet to find out how to get started. You can also check with your local University Extension offices, which both offer advice and occasionally hold courses on it.

I was just at a demo on composting this past weekend in Madison and they said that, apparently, by the year 2015 at least some parts of Madison will have a municipal composting program, where the city will come around and collect food scraps and take them to an anaerobic composting center to convert the organic waste into compost. Households will have a separate composting bin to go along with their recycling and garbage bins. They'll apparently even capture the methane emitted at the facility and convert it into electricity.

Thanks for the thread.