World Hunger

I was watching a documentary yesterday and it was about a seafood restaurant, something like Nordesee but it is a private seafood restaurant. They showed how the fishes are catched, processed and delivered to different shops. From one whole salmon, only the fillet is consumed by human. The heads and bones and being made into cat food, the skin is scrapped for other purposes.

The food in the shop are thrown away if it is not sell within it's time limit. Fish burgers must be sold within two hours, seafood salad can be kept for five days and fresh fish are discarded if not sold within days or one week. Seeing so much food going to waste is not something very pleasant but it looks like something they are "used to" or perhaps to be fair I should say "have to do".

A few thoughts came to my mind:

In Malaysia the fish head would be used for fish head curry or fish head noodle. They taste definitely good. I remember reading an article from National Geographic that the poor countries with the fishes cannot afford to eat the fish as the more developed world offer a better price for the fishes. They can only afford to eat the head.

Is it waste of energy and resources to process the fish to the state that you can no longer recognise it as fish? The fresh food being thrown away would be so precious in famine countries. For those studying economics, perhaps it would be an interesting topic for you to come up with a more accurate estimation method so that food does not goes to waste. This is not only useful to seafood restaurant chains but it would also benefit other fast food restaurants as well.

Thirdly, knowing that distributing leftover food to famine countries are impossible, I guess what I can do is not to waste food. This is something taught by my mum long time ago. At least I can save up the money and use it to aid the people in need instead of throwing it into the rubbish bin.

I came across this site that might give you more information on world hunger statistic.