I love homemade soup, but on top of a mountain after a long day’s hike, instant soup is fine.
So I was a bit sad when I found I had left mine behind on the Swartberg hike two weeks ago, but one of the other hikers kindly gave me one of her pakkies. “Better check the sell-by date,” she said.
It was March 2017. But here’s the thing: what did we do before sell-by dates? We looked, we smelt, we tasted. If it was all okay, we ate it. Which I did with the soup and it was perfect. What made me think about that was a report I read this week about the huge amount of food the world wastes. It is quite shocking. According to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), about one third of all food produced in the world is wasted, a whopping 1.3 billion tons. South Africa is just as bad. A WWF report found that ten million tons of the 31 tons of food we produce annually is never eaten but ends up on rubbish dumps. This in a country where millions go to bed hungry. About 70% is fruit, vegetables and cereals. WWF says the energy we waste every year for producing food that is never eaten could power Johannesburg for about 16 weeks. When we chuck away food, we also dump all the water that went into producing that food. WWF says the water “embedded” in the wasted 10 million tons would fill over 600 000 Olympic swimming pools. This in a country that is the 30th driest in the world. And, like those irritating TV adds, “that’s not all!” The food waste also contributes to climate change. About 90% of food that is wasted goes to municipal rubbish dumps where it rots and gives off methane and CO2. If “food waste” were a country, it would be the third biggest greenhouse gas emitter after China and the US. In developing countries 40% of food waste happens along the supply chain from farm to shops, while in industrialised countries 40% is wasted by consumers. And here’s something bad: 20% to 40% of fruit and vegetables in many countries is rejected because it is too “ugly” for consumers. No carrots sprouting “toes”, or spuds with knobs, or marrows that curl. True, some of it goes into processed food and animal feed – and now some UK supermarkets are putting up “ugly veg” bins and selling them at lower prices. But still, what a waste. And here’s a thing: the “sell-by date” is one reason why people dump food – without even checking if it is okay. But that is only one of many reasons. According to a survey in the UK, the top reasons for dumping food were because 74% of people did not make shopping lists; 35% did not plan meals and 24% had no idea of what was already in the fridge – so they bought too much and it spoiled. In London alone, 2.6 million slices of bread are thrown away every day. Food for thought, ne?
