In many cultures, not least in the Arab world with its strong belief in generous hospitality, the provision of food is an important part of the welcome. Even when a family might have little food to spare, the guest is often given the surplus.
Fortunately, here in the Kingdom we now live in times of plenty. Indeed, given the worrying rise in obesity and the conditions, such as diabetes and cardiac disease, which are associated with being overweight, that plenty is all-too-often too much. However, the problem is far bigger than simply overeating. We are also over-buying and preparing far more food than we can eat, with the result that significant quantities are thrown away.
When it comes to the over-consumption of food, the Americans are world leaders. Diners serve massive portions, fast food restaurants sell millions of super-size meals washed down with liters of sugary colas, supermarket shelves are stacked with jumbo packages of meats and other foods groaning with carbohydrates. Yet despite gargantuan US appetites, by no means all of this food is consumed. Indeed in 2010, Americans wasted 33.79 million tons of food, which someone calculated, bizarrely, was sufficient to fill the Empire State building 91 times. The average American throws away up to 115 kilograms of food every year. These extraordinary figures represented an increase of 16 percent in waste from the year 2000, even given the rising US obsession for healthy living and regular exercise.
Yet this scandal does not simply embrace the United States. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has worked out that the amount of food wasted by consumers in industrialized countries is almost as much as the entire food production of sub-Saharan Africa.
Nor is this the end of the problem. The world produces around four billion metric tons of food a year. Yet because of poor harvesting, careless storage and inefficient transport, at least 1.2 billion tons of this produce, and by some estimates fully half of it, never reaches the table. The best that might happen to it is that, rated as unfit for human consumption, it ends up being used to feed livestock.
Given that the world could be having to feed an extra billion mouths by the end of the century, and that already there are millions of unfortunates who cannot be sure where their next meal is coming from, these stark statistics ought to be a cause for the most major concern.
Here in the Kingdom, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has ordered that the whole issue of food wastage, from the field to the table, should be examined as a matter of urgency. The Ministry of Agriculture has set up a panel of experts that is looking at the food supply network to see where and how food wastage can be curbed.
The minister, Dr. Fahd Balghunaim has pointed out that failures in the food supply chain not only impose extra costs for the consumer but also cause problems in terms of disposal. If waste has to occur, then it is important that wherever possible, it can be turned to advantage. It can be recycled either as food for animals or for use in organic power generation.
On the face of it, sorting out failures in the food supply chain may be easier than the other part of the ministry’s brief. The king has also ordered that there be a campaign to drive home the need to stop wasting food, not simply in the family, but in restaurants, hotels, schools, and universities.
This will be a hard call. Certainly in hotels and restaurants, waste is almost unavoidable. Even when much of an order is cooked from fresh, part of the ingredients will have been prepared beforehand. Some of the food that is left over is given to the staff or is recycled into different dishes for the following day, but waste seems inevitable.
It is however, perfectly possible for families to cut out wasteful overbuying and over-cooking. There is no longer the excuse that friends or other guests may drop in and there will not be enough food to offer them. With freezers and microwaves in virtually every Saudi home these days, extra food can be prepared in minutes.
This is not simply about caring for our weight and our waistlines. It is also about behaving responsibly when we are surrounded by the sort of plenty that millions of the hungry elsewhere in the world could only ever dream of.
Need to check wastage of food
