As Christmas and New Year celebrations come to an end, people often look to their habits in order to improve their lifestyles.

There is one statistic in particular that might make us think when it comes to tidying up after the festivities: roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption gets lost or wasted every year.

This equates to approximately 1.3 billion tons, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) - equivalent to more than half of the world's annual cereals crop.

At the same time, 795 million people around the world were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2014-2016.

In the UK alone, 8.4m people in the UK struggle to afford a meal, according to the UN's FAO - despite the UK wasting billions through food waste every year, according to food waste charity WRAP.

A financial loss

It's not just a people cost. While hungry mouths are the most stark example of the cost of food waste, there is a huge financial cost to food going to rot as well.

Food losses and waste is estimated to amount to $680bn in industrialized countries around the world, as well as a further $310bn in developing countries.

It is important to distinguish between food loss and waste:

Food loss: Occurs between production and retail

Occurs between production and retail Food waste: Occurs between consumption and retail

Unsurprisingly, the proportion of food waste is highest in western countries, while developing countries are more likely to suffer from food loss.