Rethinking our meals

Should I scrape leftovers into the bin or use them as ingredients for tomorrow’s meal? Did I check my fridge before going grocery shopping to avoid overbuying? Are odd-shaped fruit and vegetables good to eat?

Every day we are faced with choices that can take a significant and unnecessary toll on natural resources, contribute to climate change, and jeopardize food security. Food loss and waste, expedited by inadequate storage facilities and certain consumer behavior patterns, impacts us all.

FAO, UN Environment Programme, the Permanent Missions of Andorra and San Marino to the United Nations, Rethink Food and Collective Fare Kitchen have come together to celebrate the inaugural International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste in an unconventional way.

Fifteen Permanent Representatives and delegates from the Permanent Missions of Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, European Union, Fiji, Guyana, Latvia, Maldives, Peru, Philippines, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia visited the Brownsville Community Culinary Center in Brooklyn to learn how food recovery efforts are easing pressure on food security and nutrition caused by the COVID-19 pandemic while also minimizing food loos and waste. The delegates helped prepare healthy meals using using repurposed ingredients theat would have otherwise gone to waste, working under the superivison of chefs from Collective Fare and Rethink Food.

According to Carla Mucavi, Director of the FAO Liaison Office to the UN, “this activity gives delegates the opportunity to experience first-hand an operation serving the dual purpose of reducing food loss and waste and fighting hunger. It translates into concrete aciton and results the policy ideas we discuss at the United Nations.“

Sayta Tripathi, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Head of New York Office at UNEP,  echoed Mucavi’s thoughts, as he called for all to play their parts in reducing food waste, noting that “It is one of the most important things we can do to reduce our footprint on the planet.”

In New York, Rethink Food together with partners like  Collective Fare gathers tons of of food that is set to go to watse,  and creates nutritious meals for people in need. During the pandemic, Rethink Food partnered with 40 small restaurants and community centers, each producing between 300 and 1,500 meals per day distributed through community partners to food insecure neighborhoods and frontline health workers. The initiative also generates income and employment opportunities in the participating restaurants.

LaToya Meaders, co-founder of Collective Fare, highlighted the importance of nutrition eductation as a tool of teaching people how to create dishes using available ingredients. Matt Jozwiak, Founder and CEO of Rethink Food NYC, stressed that rethinking food recovery should include both providing nutritious meals for those is need, and sparking an interest in all to learn how to prepare these meals by themselves.

The COVID-19  pandemic has disrupted food recovery systems and made the need for food assistance more urgent than before. Around the world, organizations had to quickly adapt their operations and respond to these new growing needs. Qiana Mickie, Special Projects Consultant for Just Food, hailed community-supported agriculture as a means of tackling food loss and waste from the very beginning of food production.

On 29 September, don’t forget to take the time to remember that our food is precious. Reducing food loss and waste translates in respect for food, natural resources, energy, labor, and capital that have gone into producing it.

Join us in celebrating the first Interanational Food Loss and Waste Day at the United Nations in New York with the virtual event Changing the Story of Food Loss and Waste, which will include a screening of excerpts of the documentary “Wasted: the Story of Food Waste”, followed by a live discussion among high-level actors from the public and the private sectors, civil society, and agriculture.


More information on the event, including the photo gallery, is available here. 
Find out more about FAO celebrations for the inaugural International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste.