Food waste affects us all as a nation and as a community.
“Those with lower incomes tend to go for cheaper and less nutritional food due to their limited financial resources, which has been made worse by the rising cost of living over the past few years.
29.7% of children within daycare age (zero to four years old) had or are currently suffering from stunted growth, according to ministry's data.”
More and more studies and news reported heart disease is on the rise amongst young people due to poor diet, causing health difficulties especially children's cognitive, impacting growth development, immune system, diabetics and malnutrition and more which leads to financial/medical/ burden and income generation, worsening the poverty cycle in future generations.
“Children suffering from stunted growth are more at risk of developing non-communicable diseases like obesity which will affect their productivity capability as they reach adulthood that will in turn hurt the future productivity of the country.” -Ministry of Health Malaysia.
What is food(to you)?
Everyone sees food differently as everyone came from different background, upbringing, classes, culture, location and local market(rural/urban), and etc.
Photos shown for illustration purposes only.
Above photo taken from TikTok
Preventable Waste
Due to unpredictability, chronology and scale of wastages, we only truly prevent waste when we improved the individuals diet; from eating unhealthy diet to a healthy one.
Surplus is food that failed to reach its primary consumer due to various reasons i.e; overstocking, mishandling, appearance, near expiry, rejects, and etc.
Everyday, the market will discard surplus, leading not only to nutritious food loss, but also loss in profit
Not to mention waste dumped into landfills, causing environmental harm and cost to the nation.
With YB. Nik Nazmi, Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability.
And yes, our government have been actively combating this issues with holistic measures through…
community assistance, empowerment and awareness programmes
food subsidy in public school
price monitoring and crackdown
supporting local agriculture
empowering local social enterprises like Pasar Grub
and more…