{"id":28434,"date":"2018-04-13T03:37:22","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T10:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=28434"},"modified":"2018-04-11T15:26:34","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T22:26:34","slug":"too-much-food-wasted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/04\/13\/too-much-food-wasted\/","title":{"rendered":"Too much food wasted"},"content":{"rendered":"

Millions more could be fed by the same resources if our diets changed. (photo from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

About a third of the food produced for human consumption is estimated to be lost or wasted globally. But the biggest waste, which is not even included in this estimate, may be through dietary choices that result in the squandering of environmental resources. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America<\/em>, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and their colleagues have found a novel way to define and quantify this second type of wastage. The scientists have called it \u201copportunity food loss,\u201d a term inspired by the \u201copportunity cost\u201d concept in economics, which refers to the cost of choosing a particular alternative over better options.<\/p>\n

Opportunity food loss stems from using agricultural land to produce animal-based food instead of nutritionally comparable plant-based alternatives. The researchers report that, in the United States alone, avoiding opportunity food loss \u2013 that is, replacing all animal-based items with edible crops for human consumption \u2013 would add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, or more than the total U.S. population, with the same land resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur analysis has shown that favouring a plant-based diet can potentially yield more food than eliminating all the conventionally defined causes of food loss,\u201d said lead author Dr. Alon Shepon, who worked in the lab of Prof. Ron Milo in the plant and environmental sciences department. The Weizmann researchers collaborated with Prof. Gidon Eshel of Bard College and Dr. Elad Noor of ETZ Z\u00fcrich.<\/p>\n

The scientists compared the resources needed to produce five major categories of animal-based food \u2013 beef, pork, dairy, poultry and eggs \u2013 with the resources required to grow edible crops of similar nutritional value in terms of protein, calories and micronutrients. They found that plant-based replacements could produce two- to 20-fold more protein per acre.<\/p>\n

The most dramatic results were obtained for beef. The researchers compared it with a mix of crops \u2013 soya, potatoes, cane sugar, peanuts and garlic \u2013 that deliver a similar nutritional profile when taken together in the right proportions. The land area that could produce 100 grams of protein from these crops would yield only four grams of edible protein from beef. In other words, using agricultural land for producing beef instead of replacement crops results in an opportunity food loss of 96 grams \u2013 that is, a loss of 96% \u2013 per unit of land. This means that the potential gain from diverting agricultural land from beef to plant-based foods for human consumption would be enormous.<\/p>\n

The estimated losses from failing to replace other animal-based foods with nutritionally similar crops were also huge: 90% for pork, 75% for dairy, 50% for poultry and 40% for eggs \u2013 higher than all conventional food losses combined.<\/p>\n

\u201cOpportunity food loss must be taken into account if we want to make dietary choices enhancing global food security,\u201d said Milo.<\/p>\n

Milo\u2019s research is supported by the Mary and Tom Beck Canadian Centre for Alternative Energy Research, which he heads; the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program; Dana and Yossie Hollander; and the Larson Charitable Foundation. Milo is the incumbent of the Charles and Louise Gartner Professorial Chair.<\/p>\n

For more on the research being conducted at the Weizmann Institute, visit wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Millions more could be fed by the same resources if our diets changed. (photo from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il) About a third of the food produced for human consumption is estimated to be lost or wasted globally. But the biggest waste, which is not even included in this estimate, may be through dietary choices that result in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[8051,6073,4330,2225,4381],"class_list":["post-28434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-alon-shepon","tag-food","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-weizmann-institute"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}