Estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization FAO show that around a third of all food is lost or thrown away worldwide.
In 2017, over 1 billion people were still starving.
1.3 billion tons of food are thrown away every year or are losses along the value chain. That is around a third of all food produced worldwide.
For Europe, the authors value the FAO study an annual per capita loss across the entire value chain of 280 to 300 kilograms. Europeans and North Americans throw away between 95 and 115 kilograms of food a year in the household, especially fruit and vegetables, even though a large portion is still edible. In addition, there are mountains of food that retailers are sorting out.
Source: Foodwaste
The reasons for throwing away food are innumerable, but they are often not useful. For example, out of 100 potatoes harvested, only 34 are actually eaten. 66 potatoes are rejected even though they are edible.
In Europe about 1/3 of the food ends up in the trash. 45% of all waste occurs in households. Every person in Europe throws around 94 kg of food in the trash every year.
That is bad and shows how bad the world is, says the constant hunger critic Jean Ziegler in every one of his books, and thus awakens the bad conscience of us well-fed.
But our faded memory of hunger can also be seen as good news. If we have been able to make hunger go away in the last hundred years, then it is possible elsewhere as well. Hunger is not an inevitable fate, it is a solvable problem and a matter of international organization.
In 2016, almost as many people died of heart disease(s) as people starved to death. Some die of hunger – others die because they eat the wrong thing, overeat with it and first throw half of it in the trash!
