第1487期:Food waste

How much food do you buy each week? Are you someone who stuffs your fridge and cupboards full of edible treats so that you'll always have something to munch on and so that you'll never go hungry? Or maybe, like me, you're more efficient with your shopping, only buying what you need and using up your leftovers so that you keep food waste to a minimum.  

你每周买多少食物？你是那种把你的冰箱和橱柜塞满食物的人，这样你就可以一直吃东西，这样你就永远不会饿了？或者，也许像我一样，你购物效率更高，只购买你需要的东西并用完你的剩菜，这样你就可以将食物浪费降到最低。

Throwing away unwanted food has become a big issue in the developed world. While some of us chuck away unwanted items, people in other parts of world face food shortages and are starving. It's a shocking fact that a third of the world's food is wasted each year. The actual figure is 1.3 billion tons of food, which is enough to feed a billion hungry people. 

扔掉不需要的食物已成为发达国家的一个大问题。当我们中的一些人扔掉不需要的物品时，世界其他地方的人们面临食物短缺并且正在挨饿。令人震惊的事实是，全世界每年有三分之一的食物被浪费。实际数字是 13 亿吨粮食，足以养活 10 亿饥饿人口。

You may think supermarkets are the main contributors to this mountain of food. After all, they do discard stuff that's past its sell-by-date and they often refuse to sell vegetables or fruit that are the wrong shape or look damaged. They've also been criticised for encouraging customers to buy more than they need through promotions such as 'buy one get one free'. 

你可能认为超市是这堆食物的主要贡献者。毕竟，他们确实会丢弃超过保质期的东西，而且他们经常拒绝出售形状错误或看起来损坏的蔬菜或水果。他们还因通过“买一送一”等促销活动鼓励顾客购买超过他们需要的东西而受到批评。

But the biggest culprit for creating food waste is us. In Europe an incredible 53% of food waste comes from households, which results in 88 million tonnes of food waste a year. So instead of filling our bellies, our food is filling up landfill sites – it's buried and left to rot. Unfortunately this causes greenhouse gases which eventually leads to global warming and climate change.

但造成食物浪费的最大罪魁祸首是我们。在欧洲，令人难以置信的 53% 的食物垃圾来自家庭，这导致每年 8800 万吨食物垃圾。因此，我们的食物没有填满我们的肚子，而是填满了垃圾填埋场——它被掩埋并任其腐烂。不幸的是，这会导致温室气体排放，最终导致全球变暖和气候变化。

In Denmark, a woman called Selina Juul has been working hard to tackle this problem. She moved from Russia many years ago and was amazed to see the abundance of food available in the supermarkets. But despite so much availability, she found that people were buying more than they needed and throwing too much away.

在丹麦，一位名叫 Selina Juul 的女士一直在努力解决这个问题。多年前，她从俄罗斯搬来，看到超市里有丰富的食物，她很惊讶。但是，尽管有这么多的可用性，她发现人们购买的东西超过了他们的需要并且扔掉了太多东西。

She convinced some supermarkets to stop selling their items in bulk so that people bought only what they needed. She produced a leftovers cookbook and she's now set up an education programme in schools. This has helped create a significant 25% reduction in food waste, which shows that something can be done. 

她说服一些超市停止批量销售他们的商品，以便人们只购买他们需要的东西。她制作了一本剩菜食谱，现在她在学校设立了一个教育项目。这有助于显着减少 25% 的食物浪费，这表明有些事情是可以做的。

Clearly, we need to think twice when we put something in our shopping trolley, and when we're at home we should make the most of the food we have – using recipes that use up our leftovers or even sharing our excess food with our friends and neighbours.

显然，当我们在购物车里放东西时，我们需要三思而后行，而当我们在家时，我们应该充分利用我们拥有的食物——使用能用完剩菜的食谱，甚至与朋友分享多余的食物和邻居。

词汇表

edible 可食用的
efficient 效率高的
leftover 剩饭，剩菜
chuck 扔
contributor 贡献者
discard 扔掉
sell-by-date 出售截至日期
buy one get one free 买一赠一
culprit 罪魁祸首
landfill 垃圾填埋厂
rot 腐烂
greenhouse gas 温室气体
abundance 大量，充足
bulk 批量，大量
cookbook 食谱
think twice 三思而后行
excess 多余的