Think Eat Save; 5 tips to avoid food wastage

Today is World Environment Day. This year United Nations Environment Program has selected its theme as Think Eat Save that means to raise awareness against food wastage. According to UNEP nearly 1.6 billion ton food is wasted every year all over the world. Its end result is that out of 7 people, one person go to bed hungry because the food of his pie is lost somewhere by somebody else. If this food is not wasted half of the food shortage in this world could be reduced without any poverty alleviation plan.

The main question is why we waste the food. Its results are following;

• We cook the food more than we need daily
• We refrigerate but don’t use it later and throw it away after it gets stale
• We refrigerate food but don’t bother to dole it out if we don’t need it any more
• We put the food in our plate more than we can eat and make it as refuse that can’t be used by someone else

In parties we cook food more than our expected guests can eat it

On the occasion of religious and cultural ceremonies we offer food more than our guests can eat

The food wastage process does not end here. We fully complete it in following way;

• We leave the food in big cooking pots and caterers take them away and distribute amongst their laborers more than they can eat and they ultimately throw away the leftover
• We dole out the leftover food of our parties to a few hungry people more than they can eat and they after eating it leave the remaining to mix it into garbage
• We try to store leftover food but that is so huge in quantity that after sometime we are fed up with it and throw it away from the refrigerator
• We directly throw our daily leftover food into garbage bin and deprive several hungry people to eat it as food

Mostly we waste the food unintentionally because we don’t know its importance due to its abundance in our home. However, if we realize to save it and offer it to those who go to bed hungry we will contribute in alleviation of hunger from our society. By following 5 ways we can avoid food wastage as much as we can;

• Put the food in our plate as much as we can eat
• Refrigerate the food if we really want to eat it later
• Dole out the leftover food to hungry people directly or to some charity
• In parties arrange the food strictly in accordance with the number of guests

On the occasion of religious and cultural festivals don’t make food a way to show how rich we are.

If we adopt the following ways and make them our habit no matter in short span of time there will be lesser people on this earth who have to go to bed hungry. We must remember that our individual actions can contribute to resolve a collective issue.