Busting the myth of food waste: why waste is inevitable today

Author: Cheng Syuan-yin

Examining the myth of the food waste issue. In plain language, from a business perspective, to understand the considerations behind food distribution and discard, and then to answer them. Finally, to understand the true value and intent of those who advocate for it.

[Food waste is both a real issue and a false issue]

'The United Nations points out that if the world reduces food waste by just 25%, everyone on Earth could be fed.'

'How many African people could be fed by the food the United States wastes.'

These facts are steered toward a false issue. Some people may find them quite reasonable, but give yourself one minute to think carefully about whether there is a logical fallacy.

Let me take Taiwan, China as an example: 'The water resources Taiwan, China wastes every year could let the people of Middle Eastern countries take several baths.'

I believe someone will soon point out that this is not logical. Yes, we will not ship the water over; besides the cost being too high, there are many other factors. The same situation, shifted to food itself, is identical; the food saved would not be delivered into the hands of starving people in Africa.

The reason is that the act of "discarding" or "dumping" is what "maximizes profit" for the food holder.

You may well denounce it on moral grounds, saying, why not take it and give it to people in need?

Then let us imagine: suppose we are a merchant, and we want to sell food to people in our own country.

If the food we want to sell is insufficient, such as when facing a typhoon, then prices will be relatively high. If our crops harvest too well and food is in surplus, too much can only be sold cheaply, and cheap grain hurts farmers. This is the law of supply and demand.

And we know that in a country (you can imagine it as Taiwan, China), the amount of food its people need to fill their stomachs is fixed, so once they are full, they do not need to eat more.

At this point, too much leftover food becomes a problem. If prices are all so low, and the amount everyone eats is fixed, then as merchants, won't we fail to make money? So we have no choice but to discard some of the food to make prices rise, so we can sell it at a better price on the market.

Some people may curse us as heartless, wasting food for money, but we ourselves also feel that to make a living, we have no choice.

Some people might suggest that we give away the remaining food instead of wasting it. But the principle is actually the same: the buyers are all the same group of people in the country. If some people get free food, after eating their fill they lose the chance to buy at normal prices, and in the end it still affects us sellers. (In reality there are situations of price-reduced sales of soon-to-expire food; this example provides the concept.)

A smart person like you must have thought: then if we sell the surplus abroad, wouldn't that solve it!

Right! This idea is not wrong, but we need warehousing, quality control (if it is shipped over and others get sick from eating it, that would be terrible), transportation, and various other costs to sell this food to other countries for other people to buy.

This also confirms the saying: "There is no shortage of food in the world, only a shortage of pockets (money)."

Therefore, from a merchant's perspective, since we cannot allow low-price sales on the market, and giving it away to others also costs a great deal, the simplest thing is to just throw it away.

[Understanding the meaning of advocating less food waste]

Since the problem of food distribution is so hard to solve, what is the real meaning expressed by advocating less food waste:

The meaning of the advocacy lies in reminding us that we need a heart that is grateful for food and does not waste it. Food waste is a tangled and complex structural problem, and it truly reveals that there really are people in the world who are starving. When we swallow this bite of delicious food without worry, do not forget that they, as fellow human beings, still have this problem unsolved. The meaning these numbers and slogans want to express is that the value of education and ideals is far greater than the complex reality. Through constant reminders and reflection, perhaps one day it can be solved.