Growing Concern That Food Waste, Overeating Threaten Global Security John Chipman - CBC News
go to original November 24, 2013

Millions of dollars worth of edible food is wasted every year, and this is affecting food security for people around the globe. (cbcnews/NewsVideoPlanet)

Everyone knows that we eat too much — we're bombarded with warnings about the obesity epidemic every day. But all those extra calories are not only a threat to our waistlines; they're a threat to global security as well.

Everything that well-off people in the developed world eat — or even worse, throw away — is food that isn't feeding the impoverished and hungry of the developing world. Pope Francis has equated food waste with "stealing from the table of the poor and the hungry."

In 2011, 1.3 billion tons of food, or about one third of all the food produced globally, was lost or wasted annually, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. In developed countries, the average person wastes about 100 kilograms of food every year.

“Some the food is lost during the production stage to pests, some is lost during harvesting, some is lost during processing, some is lost in storage. But a considerable amount is lost in people’s homes," explains Tim Benton, a professor of population ecology at the University of Leeds.

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