WASTE NOT (Think.Eat.Save – Reduce your foodprint!)

Food is many things to different people, a necessity, even a religious experience. One thing is common to everyone though, we cannot live without food. As B.W. Richardson puts it “Preserve and treat food as you would your body, remembering that in time food will be your body”. I consider myself a gourmet. I love food. Food to me is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

Living in Nigeria, poverty is apparent, which makes the level of food wastage all the more paradoxical. According to the Nigerian Ministry of Agriculture, the average Nigerian household wastes 150 kilograms of food per week. As poor as sub-Saharan Africa seems, it wastes an obscene amount of food. More than a quarter of the food produced in Africa spoils before it is eaten. Farmers battle post-harvest losses caused by severe weather, pests, poor harvesting and storage. These losses amount to some 100 million tons or $48 million worth of food. In sub-Saharan Africa, at least 265 million people are hungry, thus making food wastage ridiculous.

In a world of so much starvation, food wastage is a crime.

Discarded food is usually deposited in landfills which generate methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide. These landfills account for 34 percent of all methane emissions; meaning that the sandwich you made and then didn’t eat yesterday is increasing your personal and our collective carbon foodprint. Quite simply, your wasted food is killing our planet!

Various countries in Africa, most prominently Kenya, are taking steps to reduce their food waste. By far the most daring step I have heard till date is that being undertaken by a Nigerian restaurant in East London, Obalende Suya Express, which charges a £2.50 fee if you don’t finish your meal.

Most people are aware of food waste on some level. You may have heard the phrase “clean your plate.” This awareness, though, doesn’t necessarily translate into action. So how does one go about reducing one’s foodprint? Here are a few tips that I have put in practice over the last year:

• Think and make a list. By using a list I only buy the food items i really need.
• Grow your own food. I have a vegetable garden and I hardly waste my own produce, due to the thought of all that effort i put in going to waste.
• Don’t shop on an empty stomach. From personal experience, you buy more food when you are hungry, and usually it is food that you don’t need.
• Plan each meal. This helps you to utilise the food you have at hand.
• Prepare the appropriate quantity. Even if you’re a “foodie” like I am, you still have a limit to what your stomach can accommodate.
• Eat food while it is still fresh.
• Consume leftovers first.
• Save your leftovers; don’t discard them. I put mine into the freezer for snacks later or use them in other meals. As a last resort, your pets can enjoy a good feed, or maybe even the chickens can have a nosh up if you keep them. Nothing goes to waste at my house. If the dog won’t eat it, the chickens will. The only food items i throw into the landfill bin are small bones!

Using these methods will help you remarkably reduce your food waste. You would be ensuring that this year’s World Environment Day theme (http://www.unep.org/wed/) is a reality by putting William Osler to shame who said “We are all dietetic sinners; only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us; the balance goes to waste and loss of energy”. Therefore, waste not!