I'm getting a lot of satisfaction lately from this blog, and here is the very last example: in response to a rather light posting simply calling attention to an ingenious awareness campaign, I received this comment from reader S.Y. which provides actual data, links to recent, relevant reports, and makes a solid connection between food waste, development, and the East Asia & Pacific region: "Despite its personal perspective style, your article on food waste awareness is very relevant to both the food crises recently making the headlines and the Bank's EAP region. You are hardly alone in housing that ugly peach. Food waste occurs at different levels of a chain extending from harvesting to consumption. Household food waste is, as you point out, a relatively recent phenomenon in many developed countries (what the Bank delights in calling the North). This was publicised in July 2008 when Gordon Brown urged Britons to stop wasting food. The U.K. report "Food Matters" http://tinyurl.com/ypmpxq says consumers in this country throw away 4.1 million tonnes of edible food (worth an average of £420--USD836 or €533 at today's rate) per household per year. Nearly a decade ago, a U.S. report estimated an annual waste of 10 times more, 41 million tonnes, of edible food at the consumer and food-service levels in that country! (Kantor et al., Food Review 1997 20:2-12). Some blog readers may not be aware that non-trivial proportions of the ready-to-ha ...
Anytime
I'm getting a lot of satisfaction lately from this blog, and here is the very last example: in response to a rather light posting simply calling attention to an ingenious awareness campaign, I received this comment from reader S.Y. which provides actual data, links to recent, relevant reports, and makes a solid connection between food waste, development, and the East Asia & Pacific region: "Despite its personal perspective style, your article on food waste awareness is very relevant to both the food crises recently making the headlines and the Bank's EAP region. You are hardly alone in housing that ugly peach. Food waste occurs at different levels of a chain extending from harvesting to consumption. Household food waste is, as you point out, a relatively recent phenomenon in many developed countries (what the Bank delights in calling the North). This was publicised in July 2008 when Gordon Brown urged Britons to stop wasting food. The U.K. report "Food Matters" http://tinyurl.com/ypmpxq says consumers in this country throw away 4.1 million tonnes of edible food (worth an average of £420--USD836 or €533 at today's rate) per household per year. Nearly a decade ago, a U.S. report estimated an annual waste of 10 times more, 41 million tonnes, of edible food at the consumer and food-service levels in that country! (Kantor et al., Food Review 1997 20:2-12). Some blog readers may not be aware that non-trivial proportions of the ready-to-ha ...