MY TAKE
IT’S NOT THAT WE DON’T PRODUCE ENOUGH FOOD, IT’S THAT WE WASTE SO MUCH OF IT
Image credit: KAMAJI OGINO on Pexels.
By SHAGORIKA EASWAR
According to recent media reports, a shocking 17 per cent of food produced globally is wasted each year. That’s over 930 million tonnes of food.
Of this, the biggest culprits are households, accounting for a whopping 61 per cent. Food service accounts for 26 per cent and groceries and food retailers, 13 per cent.
This, when millions across the world go hungry. When not-for-profits routinely draw attention to their plight with heart-rending images of children foraging for food in piles of garbage along with street dogs.
But shocking though it is, sadly, it is not surprising.
The ways we waste are so many, some of them cultural.
Take the countries we come from, where we see a combination of frugal behaviour – waste-not-want-not being an oft-chanted mantra – and at the other end of the spectrum, the belief that leaving some food on your plate was a sign of wealth, of having reached a position in life where you could afford to waste food. Of coming from khate-peete ghar (homes with plenty), proof that you were not needy.
Faced with unfamiliar cuisine at lunch at a school friend’s place many years ago, I was bravely attempting to finish everything on my plate when she smiled kindly and said, “It’s okay, you don’t have to wipe the plate clean”.
The fact that I recalled that painful encounter when I began writing this is an indicator of how embarrassed I had felt that afternoon. Needless to say, we drifted apart as we grew older.
I had been raised in a home where we didn’t waste food. We weren’t forced to consume more than we could, either, and served ourselves whatever quantity we thought we could finish. Seeing that as a process that worked pretty well, that’s what we did with our sons. Take however much you want, but finish what you do take.
Most families in India have some form of househelp – many have a veritable army of maids, cleaners, cooks, and drivers, etc. So there’s always someone who will take food home, and there’s less wastage. Raising our sons in countries where we didn’t have anyone who would share our meals, calculating how much we might need was honed to a fine art. It was either that, or leftovers of varying vintage in the fridge in ever-decreasing sizes of tupperware! For I would not waste food.
New to frozen food, I hesitated initially. But oh, the joy of taking out a tub of chana masala or sambhar and just thawing it for dinner! Now I regularly make large batches of family favourites and freeze some for later use.
But coming back to food wastage. In countries like India, a lot of food is wasted because of lack of adequate and proper transportation and storage facilities. We often read of fresh produce that went bad because the growers couldn’t get it to the market in time. Or of sacks of grain that rotted because they were stored out in the open with just a tarp thrown over them as protection against the elements. In one memorable news segment, a frustrated activist working with farmers told a reporter that he had seen so many weevils in bags of rice and wheat that the bags “could crawl away on their own”.
Image credit: KINDEL MEDIA on Pexels.
But food is not wasted in the developing world alone.
At the events Desi News holds, I’ve lost count of the number of discussions we’ve had with venue staff about leftover food. In true desi hospitality, and petrified of running short of any item, we always, but always, over-order. Better to have some left over than to run out, being the thinking. On occasions when we’ve had outside caterers, we pack the leftovers, share with volunteers and bring back the rest and share with friends and neighbours. One friend called to say she divided the large trays into smaller portions and froze them. “Voila! TV dinners for weeks!” she reported with glee.
But when the food is provided by the venue, rules prohibit taking any off the premises. The staff agree that throwing that amount of food is a criminal waste, but they are helpless, they say, citing liability issues. We’ve offered to indemnify them, absolve them of any responsibility. To give them in writing that we take full responsibility for the food, but it’s always been a no-go.
A friend in India told me about a neighbour of his whose brother owns a coffee shop franchise in Canada. “He used to give what was left at the end of the day to the employees, but because he saw a few employees holding back on serving customers certain items they hoped to take home themselves, now he just throws the leftovers.”
Could that be true, asked my friend, aghast at the waste. I said I could only hope not. I get that one would want to offer paying customers a full choice, but to actually throw food to avoid letting an employee take home a bagel or an apple strudel? Who can justify that?
Over this past year of COVID-related hardship and restrictions, a positive trend emerged, of conserving what we have, of throwing away less and of finding ways of using stuff we might have junked earlier. This was evident in a plethora of craft ideas and also in recipes being posted online.
I’ve seen ones for everything from pakoras with leftover rice to curries made with peeled watermelon rind.
But these “new” ways were common in days of yore. Women routinely used up leftover potato bhaji in fillings for parathas and lemon peels in pickle.
So get creative, or ask your mother for tips. You may be surprised to learn of the many ways you can use several of the things you are now throwing in the green bin.
As Grant’s Desi Achiever Dr Gopinadhan Paliyath said, “On the one hand we have people going hungry, and scientists and governments are talking about the Nine Billion Challenge – how we are going to feed everyone with the world population projected to grow to nine billion – and on the other, we lose as much as 50 per cent of what we grow. If we are able to prevent spoilage, we wouldn’t need increased production. We don’t need to destroy forests to cultivate more crops, we need to use what we grow well and wisely.”
It’s not that we don’t produce enough food, it’s that we waste so much of it.
It really does come down to waste not, want not. Though in this version, one doesn’t waste so that others may not want.