Hambre, residuos y alimentación humana

Abstract

Chronic hunger, far from having diminished over the last decades, keeps haunting a growing population on a global scale and affects worldwide approximately one out of seven people. This worrying tendency has even increased over the last two decades, due to the rising malnutrition in industrialised countries. Another recent development is that people have become more aware of the actual proportion of food waste within general waste: it is estimated, that about one third of all food produced in the world is wasted. This is indeed a surprising fact if we take into account that a large part of this food waste is actually suitable to be consumed by human beings, while food banks are struggling hard to provide a growing number of people with food aid. The aim of our paper is double. First, we will have a look at the remains and the waste that are currently produced by the food chain; second, how this is related to the question of human nutrition.