Big fat Indian weddings: A Bollywood villain in war on wasted food

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s attempts to clamp down on his country’s “shocking and distressing” food wastage with his ‘Clean Plates’ campaign should be food for thought for the country’s next door neighbour. India , the world’s second most populous country after China and home to nearly 1.4 billion people, is struggling with food waste too. Tonnes of it. The South Asian country bins a staggering 67 million tonnes – about US$14 billion (S$19 billion) worth – of food every year, according to a government survey. Yet at the same time, in a cruel irony, starvation is rampant across the country. According to the 2018 Global Nutrition Report, 46 million children in India suffer from malnutrition , accounting for one-third of the world’s stunted children, while in the 2019 Global Hunger Index, India ranked 102nd out of 117 countries. Despite such chronic hunger, as the ranks of India’s wealthy swell, propelled by robust economic growth, conspicuous consumption of food has grown exponentially.

from Asia
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