Half of all food 'wasted' report claims

BBC: As much as half of the world's food, amounting to two billion tonnes worth, is wasted, a UK-based report has claimed. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers said the waste was being caused by poor storage, strict sell-by dates, bulk offers and consumer fussiness.

The study also found that up to 30% of vegetables in the UK were not harvested because of their physical appearance. The institution's Dr Tim Fox said the level of waste was "staggering".

The report said that between 30% and 50% of the four billion tonnes of food produced around the world each year went to waste. It suggested that half the food bought in Europe and the US was thrown away.

Dr Fox, head of energy and environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, said: "The amount of food wasted and lost around the world is staggering. This is food that could be used to feed the world's growing population - as well as those in hunger today. Food waste is a subject that people get very incensed about. But this report, while re-iterating the scale of the problem, doesn't really advance the story.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers review draws heavily on work carried out over a number of years for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of UN. However one expert in the field suggested that there was no absolutely reliable global data on the level of waste. One of the boldest claims in the report is that "30% of the UK vegetable crop is never harvested."...

Food waste photographed by Muu-karhu, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license