By Kam Kompani,

A new study published in Plos One has found that consumers wasted over 725 calories per day in 2011, which accounted for 25% of calories available for consumption.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had previously calculated that consumers wasted 215 calories per day in 2005, which is less than half of the value reached by the new study.

The total amount of food that is lost and wasted, as calculated by the FAO, could therefore be higher than one-third of all food produced.

The study’s findings also point toward a rising trend: 725 calories were wasted in 2011, as opposed to 525 in 2005.

Rich and Poor

The average amount of wasted food varies drastically between developed and developing nations. Belgium recorded the highest value (1607 calories per day), while the Philippines had the lowest (32 calories per days).

The study also evaluated the relationship between wealth and food waste and found that the number of calories wasted by consumers increased significantly once daily income surpassed $6.70, before slowing down and stabilizing at higher levels of affluence. Lower levels of income are also shown to lead to relatively higher amounts of food waste when daily income exceeds $6.70. The researchers behind the study named this concept the “affluence elasticity of food waste”, but warned against a common misinterpretation:

“Even though the affluence elasticities are higher for poor countries, it should not be interpreted as these countries currently wasting a lot of calories.”

The researchers concluded their paper by suggesting that policy makers should be aware of the $6.70 threshold and “implement consumer awareness and education programs to counter it before it explodes”.

Food Waste and Climate Change

If food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions behind the U.S. and China, according to the World Resources Institute.

But food is not wasted the same way everywhere. “In high and medium-income countries, 40% of food waste occurs in markets and by consumers. In low-income countries, food is rarely wasted by households; instead, 40% is lost during the post-harvest and processing stages, usually because of poor infrastructure and the lack of efficient storage technology,” the Washington Post reported.

The lntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that food loss and waste were responsible for 8 to 10% of global greenhouse gases between 2010 and 2016.

Food loss and waste generates more than four times as much annual greenhouse gas emissions as aviation, and is comparable to emissions from road transport.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals program aims to halve food waste and reduce losses along production and supply chains by 2030.

Study: Verma MvdB, de Vreede L, Achterbosch T, Rutten MM (2020) Consumers discard a lot more food than widely believed: Estimates of global food waste using an energy gap approach and affluence elasticity of food waste. PLoS ONE 15(2): e0228369. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228369