Time to start cultivating sustainable habits

September 16, 2016

Juan Febles, commercial coordinator for the Dominican Flavors Foundation, has stressed that now is the time to start cultivating eating habits that foster savings and avoid food waste.

According to Febles, “We should reflect on decisions surrounding the large-scale purchase, consumption, and handling of food, as these measures affect global food systems and security, impacting on the climate, the economy, biodiversity, and even world peace.”

These admonitions came during the discussion following the screening of the film Taste the Waste, part of the sixth Dominican Republic Environmental Film Festival (DREFF) being held until September 18 in various locations around the country.

Febles, who is also president of the School of Food and Drink, A&B Master, presented statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations indicating that 30% of food for human consumption spoils or is wasted.

Likewise, some 45% of fruit and vegetable production, 20% of beef, and 30% of grains at the global level go to waste, while governments continue to fail to execute a plan to regularize and commercialize these products.

Febles carried on to stress that governments should raise awareness among the population, especially in high-income countries, about making use of one hundred percent of food for consumption and minimizing food waste. He further stressed that states should promote new forms of packaging that extend the shelf life of such products.

“If we could save a quarter of the food wasted at the global level, we could feed 870 million people,” he added.

To this, Valentín Thurn, producer of Taste the Waste, added that there is still no culture stimulating people to get interested in sustainability more broadly.

At the end of the discussion, Juan Febles stated emphatically that the more food waste increases, the more global hunger will increase in turn. “We contribute our grain of sand to food sustainability, from the purchases we make in the supermarket to what we cook at home. And we say NO to food waste.”

By Naiomis Tejeda