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"Waste" is a confusing word. The climate impacts are on the production side. People talk about cleaning your plate to not waste food, but it's already wasted

"Waste" is a confusing word. The climate impacts are on the production side. People talk about cleaning your plate to not waste food, but it's already wasted the moment you are served more than you need, and if you then eat it, you might be actively harming your health depending on the volume involved, and we all know that eating twice as much today won't make you half as hungry tomorrow. We mostly have refrigeration now. Leftovers can go in the fridge. Storing energy reserves is the fridges job, we don't need to store body fat for the winter as long as we've got food preservation. If you aren't hungry and have all your nutritional needs already met, any additional food served, eaten or not, is pretty much waste. And a lot of the food is pretty much always wasted, because it's as good as straight up poison.

slothtrop 4y ago
Agreed that waste is overwhelmingly owing to the supply chain, grocery stores for instance.
- morsch 4y ago
  That's not really what they said. It's certainly not true for Germany, where 59% of food waste is generated at home, vs. 7% in grocery stores (and production 2%, food processing 15%, restaurants 17%). And it's probably not true for where you are. https://www.bmel.de/DE/themen/ernaehrung/lebensmittelverschwendung/studie-lebensmittelabfaelle-deutschland.html https://www.bmel.de/DE/themen/ernaehrung/lebensmittelverschw...
  - slothtrop 4y ago
    "about one third of the edible food that is wasted globally comes before the farm gate and about one fifth comes from people’s plates and refrigerators. This means that just under half of all edible food that becomes waste does so during manufacturing, distribution and retail. " -- https://theconversation.com/enormous-amounts-of-food-are-wasted-during-manufacturing-heres-where-it-occurs-102310 https://theconversation.com/enormous-amounts-of-food-are-was... Good for Germany I guess. I'll take the 59% number at it's word.
    - morsch 4y ago
      Interesting. Here are more numbers, if you're interested: https://www.unep.org/resources/report/unep-food-waste-index-report-2021 https://www.unep.org/resources/report/unep-food-waste-index-... Numbers for waste during manufacturing seem to be low confidence. Developing nations appear to have (much) higher waste in agriculture.

slothtrop 4y ago

Agreed that waste is overwhelmingly owing to the supply chain, grocery stores for instance.

morsch 4y ago
That's not really what they said. It's certainly not true for Germany, where 59% of food waste is generated at home, vs. 7% in grocery stores (and production 2%, food processing 15%, restaurants 17%). And it's probably not true for where you are. https://www.bmel.de/DE/themen/ernaehrung/lebensmittelverschwendung/studie-lebensmittelabfaelle-deutschland.html https://www.bmel.de/DE/themen/ernaehrung/lebensmittelverschw...
- slothtrop 4y ago
  "about one third of the edible food that is wasted globally comes before the farm gate and about one fifth comes from people’s plates and refrigerators. This means that just under half of all edible food that becomes waste does so during manufacturing, distribution and retail. " -- https://theconversation.com/enormous-amounts-of-food-are-wasted-during-manufacturing-heres-where-it-occurs-102310 https://theconversation.com/enormous-amounts-of-food-are-was... Good for Germany I guess. I'll take the 59% number at it's word.
  - morsch 4y ago
    Interesting. Here are more numbers, if you're interested: https://www.unep.org/resources/report/unep-food-waste-index-report-2021 https://www.unep.org/resources/report/unep-food-waste-index-... Numbers for waste during manufacturing seem to be low confidence. Developing nations appear to have (much) higher waste in agriculture.