Part 1: The Life Cycle Assessment of Food

Agricultural produce comes to use in all shapes and sizes. From our staple supply of rice or potatoes, to our occcasional juicy steak, besides water, food is what makes our world go round. The problem arises when we start to forget how and where our food comes from.

There's a story going around that some children nowaday assume that chicken comes from the Poultry Section and and cow milk comes from the milk man. Correct to a certain extent, it does not describe its true origin entirely. Whether this story is true or false, it certainly hold some truth in that a majority of us have lost our connection with how food is produced, or more importantly, how much is being wasted before the survivors ends up in our grocery bag.

Staple Food

It does not matter whether we are from Africa or Europe or Asia, unless we live in the traditional Inuit lifestyle, our main source of energy comes from the many forms of starchy plants (i.e. wheat, potatoes, rice, etc). These plants are sown, gathered, packaged and delivered to the store worldwide. Right? Like the story of the children where milk comes from the milkman, its only half of the story.

Firstly, resources such as fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides are used to grow the food. The food is then harvested and goes through a process of selection whereby totally good nutritious food is rated on how aesthetic they are. For example, carrots that are harvested are processed through a machine where it detects whether the carrot has bumps or having kinks along its body. If the carrots is not within the "acceptable" parameters demanded by the supermarket/retailer, the carrot is discarded and it becomes feedstock for the animals or just left to rot. Other criterias would be if its too big, too small, having two roots, etc.

These aesthetic requirement are also applied to other food such as potatoes and bananas. If the potato does not look like a billard ball, or its the size of a watermelon (I'm exaggerating), its discarded. If the banana is too bent or too straight, too big or small, its discarded. What I'm trying to show here is that totally good food which are edible are discarded from the human food chain just because it does not meet our "eye pleasing" standards. The disgusting part is that resources has already been spent to grow the food and only to waste it later.

The remaining food is then sent to be process, packaged and transported to supermarkets or the retailers. Here, there is further wastage when the food reaches close to its expire dates. In some countries, there is a legal requirement where food can only be displayed until a certain date relative to its expire date. Hence, after this date, the edible food is discarded into bins ready for the landfill or other purposes besides fillling up stomachs.

Next, we customers buy the food and contribute to the wastage as well. In the drive to increase profitability and cost reduction, supermarkets tend to sell in bulk. We on the other hand, try to get the biggest bang from our buck and buy more than we can eat, only to waste it later because of the food going bad. In addition, there is a misunderstanding on the term Expiry Date and Use By date. Some of us (including me), equate those two terms as equals. On the contrary, Expiry Date would be the date it is unsafe to eat the food whereas Use By date is the date where its past its best. For example, if one opens up a box of biscuit passed its Use By date, it may not be as crunchy as a new one, but its certainly still safe to be eaten and enjoyed.

All in all, it is estimated that almost 50% of food is wasted from the start of sowing to it being discarded from dinner plates. That means, for every plate you're eating, another plate is being discarded. Now thats a sin. To add insult to injury, consumers have to ultimately cover the cost of these wasted food. How else could companies make a profit if they have to pay for these unsold goods?

Meat

It is noted time and time again that when a nation increases in affluence, the demand for meat also increases. The production of meat is extremely intensive in terms of resource requirements. It is estimated that if all wheat,rice,corns,etc which is grown for livestock is freed up for human consumption, the total production can feed approximately 9 billion people a year. Can you imagine if none were wasted? With the current population reaching 7 billion, there would be enough for everybody.

However, as always, we have to meet reality (pun intended, although a bad one). Meat is an important part of our diet, as well as culinary diversity. Although there are groups out there that supports anti-meat diets, I personally do not see the billions of people in the world stop eating meat completely. I will deal with this topic in Part 3 on "What can we do on Food Wastage?"

Unfortunately, although it is a reality that food is an important aspect in any nation, there is also an increase of obesity globally. While cleaning up your tenth plate would indeed be accordance to "Finish up your food! Think of the people in Africa!", there is a question of whether our body need so much food. This is not a LCA for food, but its certainly a food for thought.