What is food waste? Food waste is the discarding of potentially edible food. The causes of food waste or loss are numerous, and occur at the stages of production, processing, retailing and consumption.

product_large_362Throughout the research process, my group and I found out that the FAO estimates that, each year, one-third of all food produced for human consumption in the world (around 1.3 billion tons) is lost or wasted. Globally, 7.2 million tonnes of food are thrown away every year, which is 19% of all the food we buy.

Surprisingly Egypt is not included in the top 10 most wasteful countries, since Egyptians are known to be very devout, they endeavor to reduce throwing away of food. A depressing fact that we found out was that if just 1/4 of the food currently lost or wasted globally could be saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people in the world.

In order to gain a better understanding of food waste in Egypt, I visited a few supermarkets around my house to ask some questions. First I went to Metro and Ragab Sons, where I asked the workers about the fate of expired/about to expire products. The answer was identical in both of them; products that expire are sent back to the manufacturer or the company. However, in Carrefour, the workers informed me that whenever a product is nearing its expiration date, a massive discount is set for it and all of these products are placed in a specific section that can be seen by forthcoming customers; for example, when I was there I saw a pack of macaroni priced at 2LE, to reduce food waste.