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教不教孩子煮飯影響大！ 一年或省5000億元食物浪費
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本報2016年7月15日綜合外電報導，姜唯編譯；蔡麗伶審校
食物浪費的原因有很多，有專家指出，每年英國家庭丟棄120億英鎊（約新台幣5000億元）的糧食，其中一個原因是學校沒教孩子煮飯。
英國前政府顧問認為，不教孩子烹飪，絕對會造成食物浪費。圖片來源：Willem Velthoven（CC BY-NC 2.0）。
會唸書不會煮飯 食物過期1分鐘就不吃
英國《衛報》報導，英國前政府顧問、廢棄物與資源行動計畫（Waste and Resources Action Programme，WRAP）執行長古德溫（Liz Goodwin）說，雖然過去十年間，可避免的食物浪費已減少了1/5，但是這個趨勢卻緩了下來。
因此，WRAP開始針對特定消費族群溝通，包括關心環境，但是沒時間煮飯，也缺乏基本烹飪技巧的年輕族群。
「我們有許多世代受過學校教育，卻不曾受過烹飪技巧和家庭經濟訓練，這些人對有效期限特別敏感，例如午夜前1分鐘可以吃，午夜後1分鐘就不能吃。我認為，不教孩子烹飪，絕對會造成食物浪費。」古德溫說。
你是為了什麼而吃？ 對食物沒感情就不珍惜
另一個WRAP的目標族群，就是不在意食物的年輕人：「他們追求的是技術上的解決方案，基本上他們對食物沒有感情，吃只是為了做其他的事。」
較年長、穩定些，不曾親身經歷但有家人經歷過二戰的一代較不會浪費食物。英國超過半數的食物浪費發生在家庭，平均每年每戶700英鎊，另外半數發生在供應鏈中。
英國超過半數的食物浪費發生在家庭。圖片來源：Stephanie Sicore（CC BY 2.0）。
儘管英國政府大砍WRAP預算，從2011年的3770萬刪減至上個財務年度1550萬英鎊，該機構的推廣活動自2007年起，讓可避免的家庭食物浪費減少21%。但古德溫表示，食物浪費下降趨勢開始持平了：「可能的原因很多，包括人們變得更富裕、景氣回升，簡單的工作做完了，接下來越來越難進步，或是推廣力道不夠，也或者是上述原因的總和。」
WRAP經濟學家過去研究發現，2008年金融危機後的食物浪費減少，一半是因為經濟不景氣，一半是因為WRAP的推廣活動。
WRAP更早期在南非的研究發現，食物浪費隨著國家越來越富裕而暴增。「當全球中產階級越來越多，問題就出現了。」古德溫說。
雖然在英國，零售商僅直接貢獻1%的食物浪費，古德溫認為食物的日期標籤仍有改進空間。賞味期限和有效期限會誤導消費者。有些食物根本不需要有效期限，像是硬巧達起司，「如果有點發黴，只要切掉就好」和部分柳橙汁。
【相關文章】
【參考資料】
Failure to teach cooking at school 'contributing to £12bn a year food waste'
Former head of government advisory group warns that generations of young people in the UK lack basic cooking skills
A failure to teach children to cook at school is one of the reasons to blame for UK householders throwing away £12bn of food each year, according to a former leading government adviser on food waste.
Liz Goodwin, until last week chief executive of the Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap), said that while avoidable food waste had been cut by a fifth in the past decade, reductions had stopped.
That has led the agency to target specific groups of consumers, including a younger generation that cares about the environment but is busy and has little time to meal plan, and lacks basic cooking skills.
“We’ve probably got a couple of generations who went through school without really getting taught how to do things [cooking skills and home economics lessons] and then they’re terrified by use-by dates: one minute to midnight it’s OK, a minute after midnight it’s not OK,” she said.
“My view is that not teaching children how to cook will undoubtedly contribute [to food waste].”
Another group in the agency’s sights is “young single people who don’t really care”, said Goodwin. “The only thing that’s going to get through to them is a technological solution – they basically don’t have a relationship with food, they eat food to do other things.”
Older, more settled people who did not live through the second world war but had families who did were less likely to waste food, she said. More than half of all food waste in the UK occurs in households, at a cost of £700 for the average family annually, with the rest elsewhere in the supply chain.
Public awareness campaigns by Wrap have seen avoidable household food waste cut by 21% since 2007, despite government cuts to the agency’s budget from £37.7m in 2011 to £15.5m for the last financial year. But the reduction in food waste had “undoubtedly plateaued”, Goodwin said.
“That could be a mixture of things, either we’re getting more affluent again, coming out of recession, or we’ve done the easy stuff and it’s now getting harder, or we’re not keeping the profile of it high enough, or a combination of those things.”
Previous research by Wrap economists found that about half of the reduction in food waste after the 2008 financial crash was due to the recession and the other half down to people changing behaviour because of awareness campaigns.
Early findings from research by Wrap in South Africa suggests that as the country is becoming more affluent, food waste has rocketed, she said. “As the world gets a growing middle class and becomes more affluent, it could become a problem [growing food waste in households],” said Goodwin.
Although retailers are only directly responsible for about 1% of food waste in the UK, Goodwin said there was still progress to be made on labelling. While sell-by dates, a stock control device, have been phased out, best before and use-by labels can bamboozle shoppers. “It’s getting better but people are still confused by the two dates,” she said.
Some products have a use-by date when they don’t need one, Goodwin said, citing hard cheddar – “if it gets a bit of mould, cut it off, it’s not going to kill you” – and some orange juices. Research by Wrap has found there is around a day’s safety margin built in to use-by dates as companies have to factor the margin in because they don’t know how quickly food will be refrigerated after it leaves shops.
With a growing population, Goodwin said food waste was still a very important issue and could not be allowed to go on.
“I do think there’s a moral case [to save food waste], because we have to think about food security, not just for the UK but internationally. If we stopped wasting as much food in the UK [as we do] we’d be able to feed the growing population in the UK without having to increase productivity or import more.”
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