FOOD WASTAGE

Food Wastage is one of the most devastating problems that we need to deal with right now. Even during this crisis of COVID-19, the food wastage is still there. In India itself, the amount of food waste produced is a very large amount. If the number of waste products can be reduced then the problem of starving can be deal within itself.
India is one of the major producers of food all over the world with being in 1st position in the production of wheat, fruits and vegetables, and many more commodities. But still, many don't even get to eat two times a day. So basically they are starving, and what do the so-called 'knowledgeable' people do? They end up throwing food that they don't like in the bins, thus producing 'food wastage'. Well, this practice is not only followed in India but also in other countries. According to stats from all over the world, a total of 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted globally each year i.e. one-third of the food products produced for human consumption.

Well now let's discuss what is food waste?

Well, the first thing to know that food waste and food loss these two terms are not the same. The term food waste is used to describe anything that is edible (i.e. fit for human consumption) but is thrown away. Usually happens at home, supermarket, etc. whereas the term food loss refers to the food lost in the early stages of production i.e. harvesting, storage, transportation. For Example in poor countries or we can say in some developing countries the milk is still transported to the processing plant in rickshaw or cycle and due to excessive heat or other reasons the milk spoils which result in the spoilage of food. Well, this happens due to the lack of cold transportation facilities. Well according to some reports in India there is about 4.4 billion GBP worth of fruits and vegetable loss annually. Well if we can protect this much loss or even half of it I believe we can boost our economy.
In low-income countries, the loss happens majorly during the early stages. The reason might vary from country to country. As some might not have a proper irrigation system, some might have problems in storage and supply chain and many more things might come up like pests and all.
Well even though the amount of food losses we have is quite large but still the amount of food we have for those who can buy is abundant. This abundance of food available leads to the wastage of this precious commodity. Consumer habits hold much to blame in food wastage.
Sometimes wastage of food happens due to some misconception about best before, expiry date, use-by date. Well, let me help you guys clear actually what the difference between these three.
Use by date indicates that when the product is not fit for eating i.e. the date after which is produced is not fit for consumption. Whereas the best before date is the date till which the product is in its best quality after that the product is edible but there might be some quality degradation.

In conclusion, I would like to say that even though food loss and food wastage both result in the loss of food but food wastage is the one which happens due to our greedy nature and hence have the greatest impact on human lives.