By Isabel Terry (Intern)
Being told not to waste food is something that was ingrained on me at a young age. Possibly permanently marked on my consciousness due to the stress that having to eat my vegetables induced. Even though clearing my plate is no longer a stressful process, it can be difficult to see the immediate connection between me and starving people on the other side of the world.
But the issue has changed from when I was a fussy child. Those people in food poverty are no longer just on the other side of the world. They are down the road, in the next street, definitely in the same community as most of us in the UK now.
Food poverty has risen hugely in the UK. The Trussell Trust, which distributes emergency food parcels through its foodbanks, announced that 355,000 people received food parcels between April and September last year – more than the total throughout 2012-13.
Pair this with the fact that 7 million tonnes of food and drink is thrown away in UK households every year, roughly £6 billion worth. There’s a pretty big gap between what becomes rubbish for some, and what is in short supply for others.
Six major UK supermarkets have recently announced that they will start to publish the volume of food discarded in their stores. A move aimed to reduce waste and raise awareness? However, supermarkets are only part of the issue. Is it them that forces us to buy, and consequently waste, food that we don’t consume? You could argue yes, with the rise of 3 for 2 deals and discounts, but we can’t blame it all on the supermarkets. The majority of food wasted in developed countries comes from the consumer.
And as consumers, there are more and more ways that we can start to help.
Campaigns that aim to highlight the issue of food waste in the UK such as Love Food Hate Waste and FoodCycle are thankfully, on the rise.
Love Food Hate Waste aims to educate consumers on how to avoid food waste at home. It offers recipe ideas, money saving and portioning tips. Then there’s Sainsbury’s new ‘face’ of food, Jack Monroe, whose increasingly popular blog about cooking on a budget has just been turned into a book.
Foodcycle has recently opened its 18th food hub and claims to have served over 79,000 meals since 2009. Volunteers help to prepare and serve food to those in need, sourcing ingredients from individuals, shops and local restaurants that would otherwise go wasted.
So food waste and poverty are in people’s minds more than ever before. It is easier to see how the food we’re throwing away could be used to help people in our own communities. It’s time to change our mentality from, ‘what I buy and don’t use won’t make a difference’ to realising that actually, it could. So we should either eat our vegetables, or do something useful with them.