This headline could easily be used in a wide array of industries and sectors, but the one I want to pay close attention to is the Food Industry, in the notorious ‘Global Food Scandal’.
Every day of our lives, somehow we are wasting vast amounts of food, be it the rotting apple we don’t want to eat, to the end slices of a loaf of bread, which simply do not seem appealing enough to eat. But how and, more importantly, why have we become so fussy, and more to the point, so ignorant to the amount of food we have been wasting? This is in issue which has urked so many people for so many years, and it just so happens that the start of this year sparked an innate interest in myself to want to know more about food waste.
So, in keeping with a post I wrote at the start of this summer, where I pledged to be reading such weird and wonderful things throughout the holidays, one book I have been engrossed in is Tristam Stuart’s ‘WASTE: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal’.
Not even half way into the book, Tristam touches base with such interesting and thought-provoking ideas, regarding supermarkets and food product manufacturers, all of which are contributing to the global food waste scandal in gargantuan amounts. In fact, one business strategy shared by some supermarkets and restaurants in order to tap into the customer psyche, which I think is barbarically stupid, is that customers want to be seeing full shelves – empty shelves will mean that they will ultimately be buying products that other customers do not want (in other words, are not good enough for consumption). Customers want to feel that the products they want are forever available and will never run out. Well, I’m sorry to warn you, but the more food being produced, the less there will be to source. It’s simply not viable, and it’s certainly not sustainable. What’s worse, supermarket stock managers will often predict how much food will need to be ordered for a particular day, often getting this drastically WRONG and OVER-predicting, and so all the energy having gone into producing the food in manufacturing factories, let alone the FOOD itself, will inevitably and painfully be wasted. This is purely about profits over people.
“Profits over People”
My qualm lies with government laws and policies against allowing supermarkets and restaurants from being allowed to donate and redistribute all of their unsold food, something which Tristam has spent years researching and investigating in order to publish his findings all into this very fine book.
I would seriously invite you to pick up this book and read it if you want to understand and make even the smallest difference in order to reduce your waste. And in the mean time, to get an insight into some of Tristam’s work and what led him to uncovering the ‘Global Good Scandal’, watch this Ted Talk first, which led me to him:
thedevpost 