This is a download from BBC Learning English.
To find out more, visit our website.
Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English.
I'm Neil. And I'm Sam.
Does this situation sound familiar to you, Sam?
You reach into the kitchen refrigerator looking for something to eat, only to find a brown lettuce, a sad -looking cucumber cumber and some two -week -old fish, all past its use -by date – the date printed on the food containers showing how long it is safe to eat.
Oh, I'm guilty of wasting food, Neil, me and many others.
According to the UN, one -third of the food we grow ends up in the rubbish bin.
And it's not just food that's wasted, it's also the resources used to produce that food – things like water, land and transport.
In this programme, we'll be talking about food waste.
We'll meet the people trying to stop us from throwing good food away and, as usual, we'll be learning some new vocabulary as well.
Here in the UK, big supermarkets import food from abroad for customers to enjoy all year round.
Summer fruit like strawberries and mangoes are flown in from tropical countries and sold in winter, increasing carbon emissions as well as waste.
Yes, that's why you hear the phrase, eat local, eat seasonal – to encourage people to buy and eat food which has been grown in their local area at that time of year.
So, Sam, my question is, which of the following foods can be grown in Britain throughout the year?
Is it a. Strawberries, b.
Kale or c. Rhubarb?
Hmm, it's definitely not strawberries because they only grow in summer.
So I'll say b. Kale.
OK, I'll reveal the answer later.
We've talked about supermarkets in Britain, but food waste is happening all over the world.
In Puerto Rico too, most people shop in supermarkets, making it difficult for farmers to choose what to sell and how much to charge for their fruit and vegetables.
Josefina Arcai is a farmer who wanted to make it easier for customers to buy local food.
She started an online shop to connect shoppers with farmers directly, without the supermarkets.
Here Josefina explains her project to Joe Mathis, reporter for BBC World Service program People Fixing the World.
So Josefina, that's the farmer who we heard earlier growing those giant avocados.
She used to have to sell her crops to these kind of middlemen.
We had a lot of, I don't know how you call, carreros.
It's just people that have a big truck and they will just come by and they will say, what do you have?
Oh, that's too expensive.
Ooh, very expensive.
I wanted half that price.
So I didn't have any way of controlling how I was going to sell.
It just depended on these people coming.
And a lot of these carreras are kind of commissioned by the supermarkets.
All this leads to food waste because it's really hard for farmers like Josefina to predict which crops they're going to be able to sell.
Josefina used to sell her food to careros, or middlemen, people who buy food directly from the grower and make money by selling it on to customers.
Josefina had no control over what to sell and a lot of her food went to waste.
Usually middlemen are commissioned.
They receive a payment from the supermarkets directly related to the amount they sell.
But with Josefina's online shop, farmers get a fair price for their food, customers get high -quality fresh vegetables and less food is wasted.
Another problem is that we throw away food after we've bought it.
In fact, the UN estimates that 60 % of food waste happens in this way, often because it's past the use -by date and might not be safe to eat.
But according to green designer Solveig Pakstajce, these use -by dates aren't always accurate, accurate something she discussed with BBC World Services people fixing the world well food makers don't know how people will keep their products so for instance they might forget to put their grocery straight in the fridge when they get home so what they do is they calculate the use by date using a very cautious estimate food producers and supermarkets they kind of have to calculate it to the worst case scenario because they don't know which product is going to get stored at the wrong temperature, so they
have to blanket apply a shorter date to protect consumers.
Supermarkets set cautious use -by dates for the worst case scenario – the worst case that could possibly happen in a situation, for example someone getting sick and dying of food poisoning.
In other words, they blanket apply use -by dates.
Here, blanket is an adverb meaning applied in the same way to everything, even when there are differences between those things.
Doing this protects customers from bad food but it also means a lot of safe -to -eat food gets thrown away.
Maybe it's best to stick to local seasonal food after all.
Anyway, Neil, what was the answer to your question?
Right, I asked you which food could be grown in Britain all year round.
You said kale, which was the correct answer.
Unlike strawberries and rhubarb, kale grows in all seasons and what's more, it's good for you too.
OK, let's recap the vocabulary we've learned starting with use -by date – the date until which food is safe to eat.
The slogan eat local, eat seasonal encourages people to buy food, which has been grown locally during the current season.
A middleman buys produce directly from the producer before selling it on to customers for a profit.
If he is commissioned, he receives a payment directly related to the amount he sells.
The worst -case scenario describes the most serious, unpleasant thing that could happen in a situation.
And finally, the adverb blanket means applied in the same uniform way to everything, even when there are differences between those things.
Bye for now. Bye -bye.
