index > Today's Earth, Our Future > 6. We love food > Like Many Other Countries, Japan is Full of Wasted Food
 
Like Many Other Countries, Japan is Full of Wasted FoodIn Japan, as much as 20 million tons of food are thrown away every year. Where does all that waste come from? Garbage from food, or "food waste" is typically created throughout the cycle of producing, selling or eating food. Let's look at the example of meat. When meat is processed, or made into a form that is convenient for sale and food preparation, the animal's bones are tossed out as garbage. And if the meat doesn't get sold at the supermarket, it will also be thrown out. And what about vegetables? At restaurants, 30 to 50 percent of the total amount of cabbage becomes kitchen scrap, because unappetizing parts of the leaves--like the spotted or bruised parts--are cut off and thrown into the trash. This can't be helped because at restaurants, customers would complain if the veggies didn't look completely fresh and spot-free, right? In fact, for every plate of food that you eat, there is over twice that amount of food going to the garbage. If you don't eat everything on your plate at home or at the restaurant, your leftovers will also go to waste. In Japan, for example, more than half of the food waste comes from people's homes. That amounts to about 10 million tons a year! Amazingly, this amount is the same as the yearly amount of rice eaten in that same country. It's hard to believe what a large amount of food is being thrown away in our own homes, isn't it? One survey shows that an average Japanese household throws away 40 percent of their food without eating or touching the food at all. To try to avoid waste, some families buy large refrigerators and stock up on food thinking it will keep for a long time, but in fact, they become more careless, and so the food ends up going bad. In the old days, before the invention of refrigerators, people only bought what they needed day to day, so there was never much food left over. In Japan, most importantly, the Japanese people in those days ate up every single grain of rice. They didn't want to waste any food because they believed throwing it away was wasteful and that it was a sin for which they would be punished. Today, Japan imports as much as 60 percent of the food people eat, but at the same time, a large amount of it is being thrown away, for example, unsold food at supermarkets, outdated hamburgers and obento (boxed lunches) at convenience stores, and food scraps from households. From this amount, only 0.3 percent is recycled, and the rest is incinerated (burned to ashes) or buried. Let's think about food that's exported (sent out of the country where it's originally from) around the world. Most of the food that's exported comes from big farms that grow the same crops year after year. Gradually the land on those farms has become poor in quality because the produce that grows there has been absorbing all the nutrients in the soil. To make up for the poor quality, farmers feel the need to use fertilizers to help the crops grow, and for the most part, these fertilizers are made of chemicals. To export the crops to various countries, ships or airplanes use fuel that emits carbon dioxide into the air. So if people toss out their leftovers, they're not only being wasteful, but they're also adding to the problem of the need for more fertilizer and energy, which leads to global warming! In Japan, before eating a meal the people often say "Itadaki-masu" (meaning something like "I'm humbly receiving this food"), which allows them to show their appreciation for the meal that has been prepared for them. At the same time, "Itadaki-masu" also expresses thanks to the plants and animals that they are about to eat, (since each and every food comes from either a plant or an animal), and because the lives of the plants and animals are valuable, too, whenever we eat we should feel grateful to them. Don't you agree?
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   6. We love food
   
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