Synopses & Reviews
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. Waste traces the problem around the globe from the top to the bottom of the food production chain. Stuart's journey takes him from the streets of New York to China, Pakistan and Japan and back to his home in England. Introducing us to foraging pigs, potato farmers and food industry CEOs, Stuart encounters grotesque examples of profligacy, but also inspiring innovations and ways of making the most of what we have. The journey is a personal one, as Stuart is a dedicated freegan, who has chosen to live off of discarded or self-produced food in order to highlight the global food waste scandal.
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.
Review
"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
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"In , 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." New Scientist
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"Jaw-dropping ...compelling--a must-read... Stuart has an unanswerable case." Bee Wilson
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"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." The Sunday Times [London]
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"An extremely thought-provoking, passionate study which could make even the biggest skeptic think twice before putting the leftovers in the bin." Sunday Telegraph [London]
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"Tristram Stuart lifts the lid on the obscene levels of produce ending up in landfill....Read it and weep." Scotland on Sunday
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"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." The Sun [London]
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"This is one of those books that everybody should read....It may well change your view of the way we treat food forever." Simon Fairlie The Land
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Deftly illuminates the global consequences of our choices about what to eat. --Tom Standage
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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
Synopsis
The world thinks it has a huge food problem'"with dire shortages, environmental degradation, and nearly one billion people going hungry. But Tristram Stuart reveals some surprisingly painless solutions in this frontline investigation and personal journey into one of the world"s most pressing environmental and social problems. In Waste, Stuart points out that farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets, and consumers in North America and Europe discard between 30 and 50 percent of their food supplies'"enough to feed all the world"s hungry three times over. Forests are destroyed and nearly one tenth of the West"s greenhouse gas emissions are released in growing food that will never be eaten. Introducing us to a motley cast of foraging pigs, potato farmers, food industry CEOs, and freegan cooks, and traveling from China to New York, from Pakistan to Japan, Stuart encounters grotesque examples of profligacy but also inspiring innovations. The result is essential reading for anyone keen to understand how our waste has created a global food crisis.
Synopsis
But there could be surprisingly painless remedies for what has become one of the world's most pressing environmental and social problems.Waste traces the problem around the globe from the top to the bottom of the food production chain. Stuart s journey takes him from the streets of New York to China, Pakistan and Japan and back to his home in England. Introducing us to foraging pigs, potato farmers and food industry CEOs, Stuart encounters grotesque examples of profligacy, but also inspiring innovations and ways of making the most of what we have. The journey is a personal one, as Stuart is a dedicated freegan, who has chosen to live off of discarded or self-produced food in order to highlight the global food waste scandal. 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. "
Synopsis
Shocking Facts from Tristram Stuart's
Waste:
- Around half all food in the US is wasted, while 35 million people live in households that do not have reliable access to food.
- The US has more than 4 times the amount of food required by the nutritional needs of the population.
- Just half of the food currently being thrown away in the US could provide the world's nearly one billion malnourished people with enough food. If trees were planted on all of the land currently being used to grow unnecessary surplus and wasted food, they could offset between 50 to 100 percent of the world's man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
- The Amazon rainforest is currently being destroyed to make room for grazing and soy production to supply the world's growing demand for meat. The land required to produce just the meat and dairy products wasted each year by U.S. and UK households, retailers and foodservices is seven times the amount of land deforested in Brazil.
- In South Korea, 98 percent of food waste is recycled--being composted or fed to livestock. The exact mirror image prevails in the US where only 2.6 percent of municipal food waste is recycled.
Synopsis
The true cost of what the global food industry throws away.
About the Author
Tristram Stuart has been a freelance writer for Indian newspapers, a project manager in Kosovo and a prominent critic of the food industry. He has made regular contributions to television documentaries, radio and newspapers on the social and environmental aspects of food. His first book, The Bloodless Revolution--'magnificently detailed and wide-ranging' (New Yorker)--was published in 2007, and Waste in 2009. A graduate of Cambridge University, he lives in England, where he rears pigs, chickens and bees.