Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2009
480 pages
Genre: Science, Health and the Environment
Publication Information
With shortages, volatile prices and nearly one billion people hungry, the world has a food problem—or thinks it does. Farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets and consumers in North America and Europe discard up to half of their food—enough to feed all the world's hungry at least three times over. Forests are destroyed and nearly one tenth of the West's greenhouse gas emissions are released growing food that will never be eaten. While affluent nations throw away food through neglect, in the developing world crops rot because farmers lack the means to process, store and transport them to market.
But there could be surprisingly painless remedies for what has become one of the world's most pressing environmental and social problems. Waste traces the problem around the globe from the top to the bottom of the food production chain. Stuart’s journey takes him from the streets of New York to China, Pakistan and Japan and back to his home in England. Introducing us to foraging pigs, potato farmers and food industry CEOs, Stuart encounters grotesque examples of profligacy, but also inspiring innovations and ways of making the most of what we have. The journey is a personal one, as Stuart is a dedicated freegan, who has chosen to live off of discarded or self-produced food in order to highlight the global food waste scandal.
Combining front-line investigation with startling new data, Waste shows how the way we live now has created a global food crisis—and what we can do to fix it.
"Stuart's brief is passionately argued and rigorously researched, and is an important contribution to the discussion of sustainability." - Publishers Weekly
"Occasionally rambling but rewarding reading on a worldwide crisis." - Kirkus Reviews
"An extremely thought-provoking, passionate study which could make even the biggest skeptic think twice before putting the leftovers in the bin." - Scotland on Sunday
"Book of the Week: Stuart’s book is passionate, closely argued and guaranteed to make the most manic consumer peer guiltily into the recesses of their fridge." - Sunday Telegraph (UK)
"In Waste, Tristram Stuart...ingeniously unites many food scandals that often do not get the attention they deserve...Usefully, Stuart offers examples of what we could be doing better, from processing technologies to offal sausages." - New Scientist
"Jaw-dropping ...compelling—a must-read... Stuart has an unanswerable case." - The Sunday Times (UK)
"Although some of Stuart's suggestions for addressing food waste are directed toward the general public, this work is most suitable for academic readers...Stuart's highly readable study may also appeal to well-informed general readers interested in food policy." - Library Journal
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tristram Stuart has been a freelance writer for Indian newspapers, a project manager in Kosovo and a prominent critic of the food industry. He has made regular contributions to television documentaries, radio and newspapers on the social and environmental aspects of food. His first book, The Bloodless Revolution—‘magnificently detailed and wide-ranging’ (New Yorker)—was published in 2007, and Waste in 2009. A graduate of Cambridge University, he lives in England, where he rears pigs, chickens and bees.
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