I can see when potatoes are no longer edible, but I see people throw whole bags of perfectly good ones away because they have started to sprout or are a couple of days past a sell by date. The same applies to all fresh vegetables. I still buy them loose from a greengrocers if I can, that way there are no sell by dates and we can all use our heads.
Now I am not silly about this. I have been known to eat tinned food a year or so past the sell by date - but I usually chuck it if it is fish or egg or meat. But lets face it if biscuits or crisps are old you can tell from a bite if they are too soft or have lost their flavour and they are not going to cause any health problems.
So knowing that I throw away over £20 worth of perfectly edible food every month because it was not eaten, or passed its sell by date and having seen plates of food bined because they had been served up at a meeting for more than 2 hours, I was aware that food waste was a problem. But I had no idea of the true scale until I saw this video.
And if you are wondering what this has to do with Gender Equality,,,
Well food shortage always impacts women and children more than men. It is women who are largely responsible for domestic food management and women who are most impacted by poverty. And because it is women in the developed world who manage food consumption in the home, hopefully those same women will begin to realise that their actions, however small, to cut food waste can together have a huge impact on the the global food crisis. If the USA and Britain cut its food consumption to the level we need, that would create food surpluses that could ease the food shortages elsewhere and perhaps cut back on the levels of deforestation in the developing world.
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