Food wastage

What is food wastage?

Food waste is a very familiar subject since I volunteered at the food bank; I’ve seen a lot of restaurants & customers waste tremendous amounts. The number of donations each day was beyond belief which is problematic. If everyone could donate a little bit to the food bank, it would contribute to the food shortage immensely. Keep in mind here, food wastage is divided into food loss and food waste. Food loss is at the start of the supply chain with production and harvest, then processing. On the other hand, food waste is found during the distribution, retail and consumer consumption. Food wastage at any level leads to environmental issues, natural resource depletion which undermines food security. ScienceDirect defines food waste as follows, “In this paper, the definition of FW reported in the FUSIONS definitional framework is adopted, which states that food waste is any food, and inedible parts of food, removed from the food supply chain to be recovered or disposed.”

Food science and future role in feeding the world I

Image credit: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The world is facing increasing food insecurities and production shortage issues, and food science will be called to address many of the challenges that we will face in the future, as frontiers in nutrition mentions, “The United Nations projected that by 2050 the world population would reach 9.6 billion. The 60+ adult population will constitute 19% (2 billion) and 27% (3 billion) of world population by 2050 and 2100, respectively.” The next 30 years there will be more advancement in food science such as reducing food waste, nanostructure in food and a change in food laws as we are facing more food safety issues in the food supply. IFT continues by saying, “During the 2009 World Summit on Food Security, it was recognized that by 2050 food production must increase by about
70%—34% higher than it is today—to feed the anticipated 9 billion people (FAO 2009a).”