1) Ever noticed all that food we toss out instead of eating? That's what we call food waste, and it's a big problem everywhere.
2) According to the FAO (that's the Food and Agriculture Organization), every year, about a third of all the food made for people to eat ends up in the trash. That's a whopping 1.3 billion tons!
3) You know how food starts its journey on farms? Well, sometimes, bad weather like storms or heavy rain messes up the crops right from the get-go.
4) Then, when we try to store food, those pesky pests and tiny organisms can ruin it, leading to even more waste.
5) Even if food makes it to storage, if it's not stored right, it can lose its nutritional value because of bad temperatures and weather.
6) And don't forget about those expiration dates at the grocery store. Once food hits its "best before" date, it often gets tossed, adding to the waste pile.
7) But here's the kicker: a lot of the food waste actually happens at home. Sometimes, we just buy or make too much food, or we don't eat what we have before it goes bad.
8) All this wasted food adds up to a crazy amount of money—like, a trillion dollars globally—and weighs in at a hefty 1.3 billion tons.
9) Crazy, right? But get this: if we could just cut back on food waste by a quarter, we'd have more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet.
10) And here's something surprising: in rich countries, like the ones we live in, more than half of all that wasted food starts right in our own kitchens.