food dump

The profits being made by Tesco, now running into £billions, would astonish Rev Dr RobertMalthus, the 18th Century economist who argued in 1798 tnat the population  had a natural tendency to increase faster than the means of production, and that we would soon be unable to feed ourselves. It was good sense at the time, but Dr Malthus could not reckon wioth the resources of the giant supermarkets, now able to load their shelves with nourishing foods from all parts of the world, or the ingenuity of the farming industry and what Matt Ridley (The Rational Optimist (Fourth Estate 2010) calls 'The Fertiliser Revolution'. Forecasting global doom in Robert Malthus's time was an inextact science; he was not to know how agricultural science would bless us.. Not only is there enough for us all in the well-fed west to eat, but we are eating the wrong things, and throwing away immense quantities of edible foods. It is reported  (Sunday Telegraph April 10) that households in Brtain dump 8.3million tons of food and drink a year, mostly to landfill sites. More than five million tons of this is said to be edible. What would Dr Malthus have made of the debate now taking place about 'best before' and 'use by' labels on food? What would he say to us about the huge disproportion between our plenty and the grim poverty which condemns millions to hunger and thirst while the burger and chips generation struggles with obesity? It's food for thought.