Good News For The Hungry People Of France...

It's good news for the many hungry folk in France with a new law being passed that prevents supermarkets and grocery stores from disposing of food fit to eat, even though the label may show it to be close to its best before date.
If it still appears safe to eat, the food must be donated to charity and if it's not safe for human consumption, it must be made available to farmers to use as animal feed or compost.
For the many who forage for food in dumpster bins, their lives have just become easier.
And thanks and congratulations must go to Arash Derambarsh, a local municipal councilor in Courbevoie, north west of Paris whose campaign against food waste led to the new law being passed. He's hoping similar legislation
can be passed globally.
The average French citizen wastes around thirty kg or sixty five pounds of food a year.
The average American throws away twenty percent of all food they buy. And in 2012, households in the United Kingdom threw away seven million tonnes of food.
We are what we eat.
Or are we what we throw away...

The World Bank Tells Us That We Waste A Third Of The World's Food Production...

As if we didn't know already.
But we, all of us, need reminding.
The World Bank tells us that a third of the food produced in the world is never eaten.
It is wasted.
And that waste is increasing the cost of buying food for you and me.
Families in wealthy nations such as the UK are each throwing away nearly seven hundred pounds worth of food a year and in the US, families chuck out nearly a thousand dollars worth of good food annually.
Sadly more than half of the food lost occurs in developing countries and in the so called developed world, the waste is caused by consumerism.
The amount of food wasted globally is shameful says World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. Millions of people go to bed hungry every night and yet millions of tons of good food ends up in our trash cans and landfills...

The Gleaners' Kitchen. A Cafe In Boston Serving Up Free Food To Its Diners...

I applaud this concept and want to tell you, researching and writing this post made my day.
An inspiring man is Maximus Thaler.
It was he who had the idea of collecting food that had been thrown away, for all sorts of reasons, like past it's use by date or because restaurants and food shops couldn't or wouldn't sell it.
He and his team of helpers go Dumpster Diving behind grocery stores in Boston every night and often collect thousands of dollars worth of fresh and edible food.
To supply their Freegan Cafe.
Gleaners were originally poor peasants who picked up crops left in the fields after harvest. Gleaners believe where there's food there's waste and that waste they can and always have transformed into delicious food.
According to multiple independent studies, almost half of the food produced in the US is thrown away. Almost half of the food produced in the US is thrown away.
Maximus Thaler believes this is flagrantly disrespectful to the environment and to the millions of folk who can't afford healthy food.
As long as the food at his Gleaners Kitchen is given away and not sold, serving up the food is legal and there's nothing the many bureaucrats that live to enforce their many rules, can do.
There's more about this wonderful story here.
Maximus Thaler is my Man Of The Year...

The World Wastes Nearly Half The Food It Produces. And People Starve...

We are a world of seven billion people.
We produce some four billion tonnes of food each year. And people starve.
We waste over 1.3 billion tonnes of food each year. And people starve.
Industrialised nations waste around  three hundred million tonnes of food because producers, retailers and consumers discard food that is still fit for consumption.
And people starve.
That three hundred million tonnes is more than is produced in Africa and is enough to feed the 830 million people who are starving worldwide.
The cost of wasted food in the US is around one trillion dollars. And people starve.
In the UK, thirty percent of vegetable crops are not harvested because their appearance doesn't meet the exacting demands of consumers.
And people starve.
Half the food purchased in Europe and the US is thrown away. And people starve.
Around 500 billion cubic litres of one of the world's most valuable resources, water, is used to grow crops that never reach the consumer or the hungry.
And people starve...