By Abby Ward

While fulfilling the unpaid and rather monotonous family duty of apple picking this morning, I spent much of my time discarding perfectly edible fruit onto the grass. These braeburn displayed one of my father’s exhaustive examples of ‘flaws’. An unattractive shape, an orange patch or a large size were justifications for throwing out half of this year’s crop. Why? Just as botox and boob jobs are soaring in popularity, our food is also becoming increasingly dependent on looks.

As millions starve in the poorest nations, much of our produce is simply rotting due to our superficial values. And this is just in the primary stages. The aesthetically approved apples may still end up in the annual 70 kg, or one third of edible food waste which is thrown away in the household, according to a 2008 UK study. US research last year found that the average American disposed of 1400 calories every day, the equivalent of 70 percent of a person’s daily nutrition needs. While we westerners pack on the pounds and turn our noses up at anything vaguely unattractive, one billion others are less fortunate, and definitely less fussy. 

In terms of climate change, the wasted food makes up a substantial part of a person’s carbon footprint. The production of 1kg meat, for example, produces more CO2 than leaving your lights on and taking a three hour drive.

This ongoing humanitarian and environmental crisis is frequently described by Western governments as near impossible to solve. However, the world produces enough food for seven billion. Apples remain unpicked on trees. Yoghurt sits in the fridge until past its use-by-date.

For the individual, cutting down on food waste will significantly reduce your carbon emissions and grocery bill. As for national change – rather than focussing on short-term wealth creation projects that have the potential to devastate our environment, we could instead concentrate on ensuring that we first use all we have effectively, co-operating with other nations to re-evaluate and redistribute our food production.