Tips for educating children about food waste

Every year 1.3 billion tons of food is wasteda great waste of resources, not only in the final product, but in everything that it meant to grow, process, pack, transport and sell.

The World Wide Fund for Nature encourages parents and teachers to teach their children why food waste matters and what they can do to reduce it. First of all, it is explained, information must be given according to the age of the child, gradually:

1. For young children: “Look how a little bit of leftovers makes a lot of garbage, when the waste of an entire neighborhood, community or city is collected.”

2. For younger school children: teach how food waste harms the world, its effects.

3. For older schoolchildren; “Do you know how much food is wasted every year?

4. For teenagers: they can take responsibility. Equip them to actively fight food waste.

We produce more than enough food for everyone on the planet, is WWF’s view, but millions of acres of grasslands and pastures on earth are devoted to agriculture, and they are never the same again. Having enough food, but limiting our impact on the environment is one of the greatest challenges of our time.

That is why an effective food strategy must include the issue of how we treat waste and what we consider as garbage. Humans across the planet waste 40% of all the food we produce, is the figure that the WWF manages. Another interesting fact: only what is lost on farms, before reaching mediators or final consumers, could feed the world’s undernourished population four times.

In addition, food waste accounts for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions (more than the airline industry) and plays a significant role in the loss of forested or grassland and other essential habitats for wildlife. They also threaten our water supplies.

Information to share with children about the food leak

Start by explaining to the children how this waste problem impacts the water. Every living creature depends on safe and abundant water to survive. But every year more than 66 trillion gallons of water go to produce food that is lost or thrown away. We can change this by producing and eating only what we need.

Raising cattle also takes up land and water in many of the world’s most sensitive ecosystems, on every continent. Even so, 20% of these products are thrown away, which means that a fifth of the water and land were used for nothing.

Fruits and vegetables are great sources of nutrition, but they are among the foods we send to the bin the most. Almost 45% of fruits, vegetables, roots and tubers are not consumed, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. To illustrate to the children: it is the equivalent of 3.7 trillion apples and a billion bags of potatoes.

By building an efficient food system that reduces waste we can help preserve the land, water and energy on which we all depend, humans, animals, plants and other living things. The total area of ​​farmland misused to produce food that ends up in the trash is larger than the Indian subcontinent (check out a map).

Around the world, people are facing increasingly extreme weather linked to climate change, and food waste is a major contributor to this threat. The food that ends up in landfills or garbage deposits produces methane, a greenhouse gas that impacts the climate. Every year, discarded food emits more than 3,000 million tons of these gases.

An efficient and functional distribution chain that brings food from farms to homes is necessary. But food is lost at every link in that chain. In the United States, about 28% of waste happens in retail businesses like stores and restaurants, while a whopping 37% happens in homes.

Eating brings family and friends together in all parts of the globe, it is a social and human experience. We need to think, however, about how our eating habits in large and small restaurants or at home are considering the environment. At home with their children Next time you have a party, do this family audit: how much waste did this gathering create?

Rectifying the concept of the ‘ugly fruits’

While knowing the theory is good, the Three o’Clock project and the NGO Feed the Children propose the next step, a series of activities to do at home with children.

• Find ways to use parts of food that are often thrown away, such as vegetable skins or carrot heads. Find out which ones can be turned into a salad or a broth.

• Store and use leftovers properly. If there is spinach left over from lunch, skip it and have it with pasta for dinner. Steamed carrots for dinner can be pureed.
• Plan for the week and make shopping lists. They only buy what they need.
• Serve appropriate portions. Filling the plates usually means a lot of leftovers.
• Give children plenty of time to eat, and not leave half the plate.
• Freeze what you are not going to use: fruits to make smoothies, vegetables to make soups.
• Freeze half of the casseroles, cakes, or sauces to eat the next time you need a quick dinner.
• Incorporate learning activities as you make the grocery list, take out the trash or prepare food, how much are we using, how much will go to waste, how can we reduce it?
• A great current prejudice is to divide food into ugly and beautiful. Vegetables do not lose value if they have more spots on the skin or if they have an irregular shape. Challenge children to taste them and distinguish between them, for example, with their eyes closed. Discuss the similarities and differences. Use them at the next meal.
• You can work together on a small garden project, while plant residues of fast-growing vegetables. LChildren will get a good idea of ​​the food cycle. Use the base of cabbage or lettuce, white onions or celery. Put them in a jar of water and watch them sprout in a few days. Plant the base of a red onion or garlic clove in moist soil. Remove seeds from strawberries or lemons and plant them. There are many ways to grow fruits and vegetables that you buy every day.
• other ways to use leftovers: show children that there is more than one way to eat food. Roast the potato skins (actually, potatoes should be eaten with the skin on, but not in all recipes). Use overripe zucchini, carrots, bananas, or avocados to make breads, cakes, and muffins. Children will be delighted. Save the citrus peels to make infusions or cleaning products. Save the rind from Parmesan cheese to add to soups for flavor. Turn leftover bread into croutons, French toast, or pudding.
• Finally, something that seems complicated. learn to do compost or natural fertilizer. This requires having a space outside the house, a large container with a lid, but without a bottom, and alternating all kinds of organic waste. It is laborious, but interesting for children, and it will add to the family project of having a home garden. (F)