Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal

Description

WITH SHORTAGES, VOLATILE PRICES AND NEARLY ONE BILLION PEOPLE HUNGRY, THE WORLD HAS A FOOD PROBLEM - OR THINKS IT DOES. Farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets and consumers in North America and Europe discard up to half of their food - enough to feed all the world's hungry at least three times over. Forests are destroyed and nearly one tenth of the West's greenhouse gas emissions are released growing food that will never be eaten. While affluent nations throw away food through neglect, in the developing world crops rot because farmers lack the means to process, store and transport them to market. But there could be surprisingly painless remedies for what has become one of the world's most pressing environmental and social problems. Travelling from Yorkshire to China, from Pakistan to Japan, and introducing us to foraging pigs, potato farmers, freegans and food industry directors, Stuart encounters grotesque examples of profligacy, but also inspiring innovations and ways of making the most of what we have. Combining front-line investigation with startling new data, Waste shows how the way we live now has created a global food crisis - and what we can do to fix it.

Tristram Stuart graduated from Cambridge University in 1999 having won numerous academic prizes. Since then he has been a freelance writer for a number of Indian newspapers. The Bloodless Revolution is his first book. His new book, Waste- The True Cost of What the Global Food Industry Throws Away, reveals that modern Western countries waste more food than they consume, and that tackling this problem is one of the simplest ways of reducing pressure on the environment and on global food supplies.

An extremely thought-provoking, passionate study which could make even the biggest skeptic think twice before putting the leftovers in the bin. Book of the Week: Stuart s book is passionate, closely argued and guaranteed to make the most manic consumer peer guiltily into the recesses of their fridge. Deftly illuminates the global consequences of our choices about what to eat.--Tom Standage Every day all around the globe, appallingly enormous amounts of otherwise edible food go to waste even while humans are starving. Stuart aims to educate people about where such waste occurs, how much of it there is, and what possible steps can be undertaken to reduce it substantially if not eliminate it altogether.... Notes and a huge bibliography lead readers to additional resources on this pressing environmental issue.--Mark Knoblauch In Waste, Tristram Stuart...ingeniously unites many food scandals that often do not get the attention they deserve...Usefully, Stuart offers examples of what we could be doing better, from processing technologies to offal sausages. Jaw-dropping ...compelling a must-read... Stuart has an unanswerable case.--Bee Wilson Passionate, closely argued and guaranteed to make the most manic consumer peer guiltily into the recesses of their fridge.--John Preston The world faces incredibly difficult challenges we simply can't afford the kind of crazy waste Tristram Stuart uncovers and describes in this beautifully reported work. It's nauseating in places, but ultimately hopeful: if we got serious about preventing this waste, we might just find the margin we need to deal with our biggest problems.--Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy This is a first class book, as copiously referenced as any academic report, yet both blunt and incisive the sort of book one can expect only from someone who gets his hands mucky as well as inky.--Simon Fairlie This is one of those books that everybody should read....It may well change your view of the way we treat food forever.--Paul Kingsnorth Tristram Stuart lifts the lid on the obscene levels of produce ending up in landfill....Read it and weep. Jaw-dropping ...compelling-a must-read... Stuart has an unanswerable case. -- Bee Wilson The world faces incredibly difficult challenges-we simply can't afford the kind of crazy waste Tristram Stuart uncovers and describes in this beautifully reported work. It's nauseating in places, but ultimately hopeful: if we got serious about preventing this waste, we might just find the margin we need to deal with our biggest problems. -- Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy