University of Otago food science staff investigating food
waste, including the use of offal, are (from left) Prof Dr
Indrawati Oey, Dr Miranda Mirosa and Ana Hosiet, at Fred D.
Eskrick's butchery, Dunedin, yesterday. Photo by Craig
Baxter.
Food waste is full of untapped potential, and could be
costing the country more than $2 billion a year, two points a
group of University of Otago staff wants to change.
Eight people across six departments joined forces about a
year ago and established the food waste innovation research
group to study ways to cut food waste.
Food science lecturer Dr Miranda Mirosa said there was a lot
of "research enthusiasm" for the complex, significant issue.
The group was focusing, at present, on building relationships
between the disciplines, which included food science, applied
sciences, marketing and sociology, gender and social work,
but intended to seek funding for projects this year.
"Food waste has been identified as one of the easiest things
for people to change, which has one of the biggest impacts in
terms of the sustainability of their diets," she said.
She wanted to look at how people were cooking and what they
were putting in their rubbish bin, and encourage the use of
entire foods or animals.
"Nose-to-tail eating is one way to reduce the amount of food
which is wasted," she said.
Businesses could benefit economically from reducing food
waste, as they could save, and even make money.
"Sending food waste to the landfill seems like a really
stupid thing to do."
Prof Dr Indrawati Oey said opportunities for making the most
of food waste could include turning it into energy, making
higher value products with "good" rejected fruit, or
extracting a higher percentage of juice from grapes used in
viticulture.
"I think people here don't really care about waste because
there is enough land to throw things away ... it is a big
issue," she said.
New Zealand promoted itself as being clean and green, so it
needed to be seen as a country that was leading the way in
reducing food waste and being more sustainable.
It is understood about 13% of total food purchases were
thrown out each year, equating to more than $2 billion, or
$465 per person, of food waste per year.
ellie.constantine@odt.co.nz
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