Introduction:
Preventing food wastage is highly important. The number of people who suffer from hunger has slowly been on the rise since 2014, and on the other hand, loads and loads of edible food are wasted or lost every day. When food is wasted or lost, all the resources that were utilized in preparing it like energy, land, water, labor, and capital all go to waste. This calls for a need to practice food safety norms and decontaminating post-harvest crops, and mainly innovative ways need to be developed to prevent food spoilage.
Why Is Food Wastage or Spillage Economically Detrimental?
One of the major impediments to producing any functional or high-quality foods is food wastage. There can be several reasons why a crop harvest can go wasted such as due to microbial contamination, spillage, and industrial, chemical, or metallic pollutants that can contaminate or creep into food chains. Food wastage or spillage is economically detrimental because
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Wasting food or crops in a particular area or region may also mean that the labor involved in the production of that crop is also wasted as well. This loss not only affects the biological production of the crops but is also a setback to the manual or local efforts of farmers, the labor involved, and the efforts of local agricultural bodies who are involved in monitoring the food quality and production of commercial food products also get affected. Usually, the local agricultural systems or the regional bodies monitor the quality and safety of food products especially in the post-harvest stage, with several countries also adopting international regulations to ensure that there are fewer concerns associated with the contaminants that are physically present in crops. The overall manufacturing quality of several food products has improved over the past decade.
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Yet surprisingly, there is still a tremendous waste of labor and material, given that issues like food wastage or spillage are still rampant in many agri systems worldwide. One of the classic examples where the regional bodies initiated a global move to prevent food wastage is called ‘Save Food’ that was launched by the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) which aims primarily at encouraging talks or conversation between the food industry, research, and politics pertaining to food losses faced in a time period. The European Union is an example of one of these ‘Save Food’ campaigns. Similarly, there are several local or regional food-saving bodies or systems that address the wastage of food, preventing food loss from the overall perspective of sustainable development.
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One might wonder how economic development may be hindered by food loss. Well, it would be astonishing to note that the per capita loss globally of food waste, be it at the consumer level or the retail level can be an alarming setback to global development, from an economic perspective. A lot of revenue is not only wasted but as mentioned earlier, the efforts of manual labor, agri systems, and the wastage of natural and modern-day agricultural methods or resources can definitely pose a setback, when food wastage increases.
What Are the Commonly Wasted Food Products?
Currently, several international organizations across the world including the WHO (World Health Organization) are addressing the issue of food losses and food wastage in the context of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). According to SDG concepts, the goal is to reduce the post-harvest food loss by the year 2030, by almost halving the per capita global food wastage at the retail and consumer levels.
Generally, when there is a high wastage issue related to harvest or if there is a high possibility of food wastage that is generated worldwide by the food industry, it can result in disposal problems of agricultural and food chain wastes. This becomes another reason for environmental, industrial, or even agricultural pollution across the world. Environmentalists are now raising safety issues regarding the enormous volume of food waste that is produced by food industries in different countries because the processing or disposal of food waste will pose environmental threats.
Fruits and vegetables are the most common food waste volumes in the supply and handling chains, as currently estimated by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). Apart from fruit and vegetable waste, rice is one of the major volume crops that is wasted. These contribute to about 60 percent of waste compared to other residual food wastes.
How Can Food Wastage Be Prevented?
Food wastage can be prevented in the following ways:
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Use of Fruit Pomace for Food Wastage: Fruit pomace is a by-product and a solid waste derived by pressing fruits or vegetable waste and can contain pulp, skin, seeds, and stones. According to current nutrition research, fruit pomace is usually rich in terms of its bioactive compound content, which means that it can prevent food wastage issues by incorporating healthy dietary fiber into various commercial food products ranging from bread, pastries, muffins, cookies, biscuits, bagels, and so on.
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Using Fruit and Veggie Residues: To maximize functional foods generally in commercial food markets or to prevent food wastage or spillage (especially from fruits and vegetables), the other strategy that can be adopted by food industries according to nutrition experts is to use the fruit and vegetable residues that are generated from different isotonic beverages. Their residues can be commercially processed or incorporated in a healthy way like flour, in grain formulations, or in different formulations of products like cereals, biscuits, granolas, or protein bars. The aim of utilizing fiber-rich fruit and vegetable residues in food chains is to enhance the quality of food products so that commercial food wastage can be reduced.
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Upcycling Based on Circular and Linear Models of Economy: Upcycling, which is the concept that works on the linear and circular models of economy aims to reduce food waste in the industry, by allowing more scope for using only existing resources in food manufacturing. The classic example of upcycling products is the manufacturing of rice crackers from leftover rice. By monitoring the quality of the food products and by utilizing all healthy and organic food resources, food waste can be prevented by upcycling through these economic models, especially in perspective to food volume or load.
Conclusion:
Sufficient food is produced by the world’s farmers to feed more than the global population, yet hunger prevails. Hence, the need to adopt integrated approaches to reduce food loss and waste is crucial. To improve the quality of commercial food products or in the post-harvest stage of crops, monitoring by local agri systems or regional food processing bodies can ensure the removal or elimination of industrial, metallic, bacterial, and fungal pollutants from the food chain, so that the quality of products can be higher, resulting in less wastage of food.
