If affluent nations stopped throwing away so much food, pressure on the world’s remaining natural ecosystems, and on the climate, would be lifted. It’s a far vaster landscape than the pigpen where I raised Gudrun, and yet the lessons I learnt as a schoolboy picking up leftovers at the canteen apply. Supermarkets, restaurants, canteens and manufacturers must stop being so negligent. When surplus does arise, it should be given to charities for redistribution to the needy. Anything that cannot be eaten by people should, wherever possible, be fed to livestock. Consumers, meanwhile, must simply stop wasting food. The history of human society shows that frugality comes in cycles. In times of plenty, waste is an affordable luxury but as soon as resources are stretched, voices urging parsimony come to the fore. Jesus Christ, Muhammad, John Locke all repeated the same message: that wasting food is wrong.
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