Up to 40 percent of fruits or vegetables can be wasted because it is “ugly”, a report on food waste reveals.
Produce grown in the UK that does not meet retailer standards on size or shape or is blemished is often used for animal feed or simply ploughed back into the ground even though it is edible, with as much as two-fifths of a crop rejected.
The Uk’s global food security programme, also showed that the average household throws away more than 11 pouinds of food a week, and nearly two-thirds of that waste is avoidable.
Households throw away a fifth of the food they buy, wasting it for reasons ranging from cooking and preparing too much food to not using it in time before the packaging due date expires.
Retailers respond to demands by consumers for high-quality food by imposing standards that can lead to much of the crop being wasted. However, some progress is being made with supermarkets marketing “odd shapes and sizes” for fruit and vegetables.
In developing countries, much of the loss of food occurs during post-harvesting storage, processing and packaging.
Tackling food waste globally is a major part of the action needed to provide enough food to feed a growing world population sustainably and tackle hunger, which affects one in eight people worldwide, the report said.
Around a third of food produced globally is lost or wasted.
“Over 5 million people in the UK live in deep poverty, where basic food provision is a daily challenge,” says food expert Tim Benton.
The report highlights priorities for research to help reduce food waste, including improving harvesting and packaging technologies, good seasonal weather prediction and new ways to reduce food waste within the home.