By Noella Prescod

Today I am going to be talking to you about food waste.  I can be very particular about what I eat.  Sometimes it drives my mommy crazy.  So last week my mommy told me about a documentary she watched on tv about food waste.

It is called “Just Eat It” and it was filmed in Vancouver by two people who live here.  So I decided to watch it and I really enjoyed it!  So much that I wanted to do my current events on it.

Here are some of the things I was surprised to learn:

Did you know that 40% of food is wasted (that includes farms, supermarkets and businesses).

And at home 25% is wasted.  That’s like buying four bags of food and dropping one in the parking lot, and not caring or bothering to pick it up.

The movie is about a couple who decided to go 6 months eating only the food supermarkets would have otherwise thrown away.  You may be thinking that they are only eating food scraps, but they actually had a lot of really fancy food.  They didn’t eat leftovers, half eaten food; they are the food that the grocery store was getting rid of, usually still packaged, and tossed in their garbage bin outside behind the store.

So one day the man is looking for food.  When he goes behind the supermarket there was a extra food bin, about as big as a small swimming pool filled to the brim with hummus.  His first thought was “they must have gone bad.” But they had 3 weeks left on the best before date.  His exact words were: “When I started this project I expected to find some waste, but when you are actually standing in front of something like that…it is totally different.”

A bit more about best before dates:  there are two kinds of dates.  One is for the supermarket staff to read and its just for assuring them that it will be fresh if they sell it on or before that date.  Then there is the kind meant for customers to see, but they are just saying that it is fresh until that day.  After that day it might not be fresh anymore.  It is not saying that it will hurt you or make you sick if you eat it after that day.

One day when they were doing the project they found a lot of chocolate.  It was very expensive chocolate but they found and got it for free.  They decided to save it for Halloween.  They gave full size, large chocolate bars to every kid.  Everyone who came was delighted.

Now let’s talk about farm waste.  If the food is not perfect, even it if has a small spot on it, they will not sell it.  Instead they will throw it away.

That’s a lot of food waste!

The end.