One of my food heroes is a man named Tristram Stuart, an English writer and speaker who for many years has campaigned against food waste. He was a keynote speaker at a Metro Vancouver zero-waste conference a few months ago. Mr. Stuart’s TED talk, called ‘the global food waste scandal,’ which you can see at his site http://www.tristramstuart.co.uk, has been viewed over one million times. A few of them by me.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the people in my community who are chronically hungry, so reviewing Mr. Stuart’s talk today made me both angry and sad. A shocking one-third of our food gets thrown out rather than ever consumed, according to the United Nations Environmental Program here.
But the good news is that food waste is something we can stop.
One dramatic place to start is with “imperfect” fruits and vegetables. As Mr. Stuart describes, mountains of food are wasted because producers are told it does not meet cosmetic standards. Yet they’re perfectly good to eat.
Some retailers are beginning to understand the importance of lowering food waste, and have started offering twisted carrots, nicked oranges, and otherwise non-standard produce to consumers who don’t mind, or who (like me) deliberately buy such items to support this crucial part of the food movement. Try it!