The U.N. eats trash for lunch as food waste takes center stage
By Marilyn La Jeunesse From Mashable
A Sunday’s lunch at the United Nations was a piece of garbage.
No, really.
Lunch was made from food that would have otherwise found itself in a landfill halfway across the world.
The “landfill lunch” was served to about 30 world leaders at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit on a Sunday last year, including French President Francois Hollande, Peruvian President Ollanta Humala and U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.
Landfill Lunch
“Our lunch was produced from food that would otherwise end up in landfills, emitting methane, a potent greenhouse gas,” Ban Ki-moon told reporters. “Food production and agriculture contribute as much to climate change as transportation. Yet, more than a third of all food produced worldwide — over 1 billion tons of edible food each year — goes to waste. That is shameful when so many people suffer from hunger.”
The vegetarian menu was created by celebrated chef Dan Barber, a long time anti food waste advocate, and former White House chef Sam Kass, who helped first lady Michelle Obama promote the anti-obesity “Let’s Move” campaign.
The menu included a “Landfill Salad” made from unwanted vegetable scraps and chickpea water. The world leaders also dined on a vegetable burger made with the leftover pulp from juicing and fries created from corn that would normally be fed to farm animals.
“Spent grain bread” — baked from grain left over from brewing and distilling process and unrefined oil extracted from squash seeds — was also served. The lunch concluded with “cocoa husk custard” made from the outer shell of cocoa bean, the material left over after pressing nuts for oil and pulp of the coffee cherry.
The “landfill lunch” was meant to dramaticize the global food waste problem in light of the year-end U.N. climate change conference in Paris. Estimates from the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization in 2014 found a total of 28% of agricultural lands around the world produce food that is lost or wasted.
This loss is equivalent to 3.3 billion tonnes of carbon.
According to the Ban, the consensus among the world leaders at the lunch was that the agreement to be reached in Paris should “strengthen resilience to climate impacts, with a focus on the poorest and most vulnerable.”
IMAGES:
This beautiful burger came from the trash can. IMAGE: INSTAGRAM
Veggie scraps instead of caviar for heads of state. IMAGE: AP/ALAIN JOCARD
For more on this story go to:
By Marilyn La Jeunesse From Mashable
A Sunday’s lunch at the United Nations was a piece of garbage.
No, really.
Lunch was made from food that would have otherwise found itself in a landfill halfway across the world.
The “landfill lunch” was served to about 30 world leaders at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit on a Sunday last year, including French President Francois Hollande, Peruvian President Ollanta Humala and U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.
Landfill Lunch
“Our lunch was produced from food that would otherwise end up in landfills, emitting methane, a potent greenhouse gas,” Ban Ki-moon told reporters. “Food production and agriculture contribute as much to climate change as transportation. Yet, more than a third of all food produced worldwide — over 1 billion tons of edible food each year — goes to waste. That is shameful when so many people suffer from hunger.”
The vegetarian menu was created by celebrated chef Dan Barber, a long time anti food waste advocate, and former White House chef Sam Kass, who helped first lady Michelle Obama promote the anti-obesity “Let’s Move” campaign.
The menu included a “Landfill Salad” made from unwanted vegetable scraps and chickpea water. The world leaders also dined on a vegetable burger made with the leftover pulp from juicing and fries created from corn that would normally be fed to farm animals.
“Spent grain bread” — baked from grain left over from brewing and distilling process and unrefined oil extracted from squash seeds — was also served. The lunch concluded with “cocoa husk custard” made from the outer shell of cocoa bean, the material left over after pressing nuts for oil and pulp of the coffee cherry.
The “landfill lunch” was meant to dramaticize the global food waste problem in light of the year-end U.N. climate change conference in Paris. Estimates from the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization in 2014 found a total of 28% of agricultural lands around the world produce food that is lost or wasted.
This loss is equivalent to 3.3 billion tonnes of carbon.
According to the Ban, the consensus among the world leaders at the lunch was that the agreement to be reached in Paris should “strengthen resilience to climate impacts, with a focus on the poorest and most vulnerable.
IMAGES:
This beautiful burger came from the trash can. IMAGE: INSTAGRAM
Veggie scraps instead of caviar for heads of state. IMAGE: AP/ALAIN JOCARD
For more on this story go to: http://mashable.com/2015/09/28/united-nations-lunch-waste/?utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedburner&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher#KgB77gk2wsq0
