Far too much food is just binned if somebody is too full, needs to leave early, or similar, and if food wasn’t wasted, there would not be nearly as large of a hunger crisis. Encouraging the reduction of food waste is great, but I’m wondering whether the inevitable food waste could be collected in special bins and be reprocessed into a mixture of various foods, a bit like recycled plastic almost. This obviously could be bad for those with allergies, and there’s no clear expiry date for such a mixed assortment of food. There is also the trouble of people throwing in non food items, like tissues and plastic wrapping. This is already a big problem in recycling!
An alternative could be to separate food waste into multiple bins (meats, vegetables, nuts, dairy, etc.) that could be individually processed, kind of like how recycling is separated into paper, plastic, and cans. Then, allergens could be separated, vegetarian unfriendly products too, and the reprocessed food would be less of a mix and could be portioned into balanced diets.
Some food waste is already processed to become compost, but I’m wondering whether it’s possible for reprocessed food waste to be edible and eaten over being dumped in landfills?
Hunger is not caused by people not finishing what is on their plate or by allowing over-ripe fruits and vegetables to be discarded.
Hunger is caused by our profit based food distribution system.
People with little or no money get little or no food. It sucks, but that is how it works.
Unless you can somehow take the profit away from the final destination so that anyone who wants food can have food, that will not change. I can’t even imagine a way to do it in an equitable fashion without a cultural shift away from money and towards having a healthy community that cares about the individual humans and is willing to share equally to do it.