By Samantha Semoso – EMTV Online
For those who have never tried ‘rejected’ veggie curry made with ‘saved’ coconut milk served with ‘broken rice’ and washed down with corn cob tea, two United Nations agencies have joined up with an Australian food charity for an event with a menu that also included ‘fish scrap cake’ and ‘rescued’ mango relish, accompanied by ‘leftover’ nine-grain followed by ‘rescued’ bread pudding for dessert.
In Bangkok and Thailand this week, those were some of dishes prominent chefs and other food lovers from Thailand and Australia were preparing with ingredients that are usually discarded, to promote awareness of 1.3 billion tons of food wasted each year.
The Think.Eat.Save event was organised by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the Australian food charity OzHarvest in support of the new UN Sustainable Development Goals target to halve global food waste along production and supply chains by 2030.
“UNEP is tackling food waste head-on with its Think.Eat.Save methodology for waste prevention at city, country and company-level,” Kaveh Zahedi, UNEP Regional Director and Representative for Asia and the Pacific, said in a press release.
An estimated 20 to 40 per cent of food is lost or wasted along the supply chain in Asia Pacific because food is lost in transit between rural production areas and urban consumers and because of poor quality roads, hot and humid weather conditions, and poor packaging, according to UNEP.
