Waste not want not.... an old adage with increasing relevance

Why do we waste up to 50% of our food?  Why is it that we can't redistribute this waste to the hungry?  Over the last two weeks we've been searching Manchester high and low, looking in bins and eating the contents.  We've found a plethora of entirely edible items - from potatoes, carrots, oranges, and tomatoes to pork pies, fresh eggs and fish.  As students we're all feeling the pinch as the recession threatens to deepen, which makes free egg butties feel even more satisfying!  The video below shows the contents of just one of the bins that we've searched.  After two minutes of searching we found enough food to make several stews, as well as dessert to go with them!

Obviously, we are throwing away vast quantities of food that could be put to much better use.  Considering there are 925 million hungry people on Earth, it seems abhorrent that there is perfectly decent food being thrown away on such a large scale.  However, what is there to be done about tackling food waste?  The video below gives the opinions of some Plant Science students from the University of Manchester...

This link is to a blog dedicated to asking questions about food waste...  this will surely inspire some food for thought!  The author, Jonathan Bloom, has written a book entitled "American Wasteland" in which he describes how Americans throw away almost half of their food...

http://www.wastedfood.com/

Finally...  why do you think we waste so much food?  What could be done with the waste that we produce?  Couldn't we plant spuds rather than throwing them away?  Another important question to ask yourself is...


Would you eat this banana?

@TFFManchester