There is so much food in the world that is getting wasted. The food we waste can be reused in many different ways like using leftovers for other meals, Donating to charities or even just giving to the homeless, again food can be reused in so many different ways, why waste it? But there may be a solution.
It may feel like we have all the food in the world but there is actually only a limited amount of food in the world and we are wasting it. If we keep wasting so much food we will eventually run out of food and if we run out of the food we could starve to death. Most of the food we buy ends up going to waste because we don’t eat it or we don’t finish our meals.
We are wasting tones of money on unnecessary food that is just going to waste, It’s not just a waste of food it is also a waste of money. Food is also wasting money, money that you could have used for other things that you might need. We are wasting money on unnecessary food that is getting wasted which isn’t good because all of that food could have gone to charities or reused in any way.
New Zealand by its self wastes up to 157,389 tonnes of food each year that is equal to 271 jumbo jets of food that is going somewhere to rot instead that food could have been eaten. All of this food is worth around $1.8 billion each year. We waste Over 240 million slices of bread that just gets thrown away. And we waste around 5.9 million glasses of milk poured down the sink every year
Every day people are spending Heaps of money to feed their family and others around them, they are wasting so much food that you could be used to make into other meals but instead, people are just throwing their food in the bin. Some people don’t realize how lucky they are to have food there to eat whenever they want when poor and homeless people don’t have much money and they can’t afford a meal every day.
The amount of money we are wasting on food is crazy. We waste up to $1.8 billion on food! People are paying heaps of money to pay for their food to feed their children, themself and even their pets ( if they have pets) especially people with big families, people with bigger families have to pay for more food because they have to buy more food so everyone can eat. A survey of 1003 people showed almost 80 percent of people said they did not like to waste food but 94 percent did anyway, with an average of $1071 worth of food per household wasted each year. The survey also showed that people who ate out more than three times a week waste up to 21 percent of their groceries it also showed that 55 percent of households threw out food because it had gone out and 15 percent of it was because of unfinished meals.
Best before dates can have a big impact on all of this food waste, If people see the best before dates on the food they will think that the food cannot be eaten anymore. Best before-dates are often mistaken for use-by-dates which leads to a big increase in food waste as people keep on throwing away all this perfectly fine edible food. New Zealander’s throw away roughly two billion dollars’ worth of food every year. 60 percent of the food that we waste from mistaking best before dates or just in general ends up in landfills is still 100% edible.
By saving food we can help our community and try to reduce as much as we can. It is not that hard to reduce your food waste. If you have chickens or another farm animal that eats food scraps you can feed them with food scraps therefore that food is not going to waste. You could also use your leftovers for dinner or lunch the next day. It’s simple and if we all can work together we can help make a change and reduce all the food that we waste in just New Zealand.
But there may be a solution to all of this waste. Bugs could be our solution, some bugs are actually 100% eatable. Bugs could help solve this problem of all this waste, You can eat so many different types of bugs like Grasshoppers & Crickets, Ants, Termites, Grubs, Wood Lice, Earthworms, Stinkbugs, Scorpions, Earwigs, Aphids, Maggots, and Dragonflies. Some bugs that are edible but you should avoid eating like Slugs & Snails, Tarantulas, Bees & Wasps, and Caterpillars, although you can eat them, they can be very hard to find and not the best to eat.