Food waste
食品浪费
How much food do you buy each week? Are you someone who stuffs your fridge and cupboards full of edible treats so that you'll always have something to munch on and so that you'll never go hungry? Or maybe, like me, you're more efficient with your shopping, only buying what you need and using up your leftovers so that you keep food waste to a minimum.
你每周买多少食物？你是那种把冰箱和碗柜塞满各种能吃的食物的人吗？或者，像我一样，你购物更有效率，只买自己需要的东西。而且每次不留剩饭剩菜，以将食物浪费降到最低。
Throwing away unwanted food has become a big issue in the developed world. While some of us chuck away unwanted items, people in other parts of world face food shortages and are starving. It's a shocking fact that a third of the world's food is wasted each year. The actual figure is 1.3 billion tons of food, which is enough to feed a billion hungry people.
在发达国家，扔掉不需要的食物已经成为一个大问题。当我们中的一些人扔掉不需要的东西时，世界上其他地方的人们面临着食物短缺和饥饿。每年有三分之一的世界粮食被浪费，这一事实令人震惊。实际数字是13亿吨粮食，足够养活10亿饥饿人口。
You may think supermarkets are the main contributors to this mountain of food. After all, they do discard stuff that's past its sell-by-date and they often refuse to sell vegetables or fruit that are the wrong shape or look damaged. They've also been criticised for encouraging customers to buy more than they need through promotions such as 'buy one get one free'.
你可能认为超市是堆积如山的食物的主要来源。毕竟，他们确实将过了保质期的东西清理掉，而且他们经常拒绝出售形状或外观受损的蔬菜或水果。他们还因鼓励顾客通过“买一送一”等促销活动购买超出需求的商品而受到批评。
But the biggest culprit for creating food waste is us. In Europe an incredible 53% of food waste comes from households, which results in 88 million tonnes of food waste a year. So instead of filling our bellies, our food is filling up landfill sites - it's buried and left to rot. Unfortunately this causes greenhouse gases which eventually leads to global warming and climate change.
但是造成食物浪费的罪魁祸首是我们自己。在欧洲，令人难以置信的是53%的食物浪费来自家庭，这导致的食物浪费达到每年8800万吨。因此，我们的食物不是填饱肚子，而是填满了垃圾填埋场——它们被埋起来，任其腐烂。不幸的是，这会产生温室气体，最终导致全球变暖和气候变化。
In Denmark, a woman called Selina Juul has been working hard to tackle this problem. She moved from Russia many years ago and was amazed to see the abundance of food available in the supermarkets. But despite so much availability, she found that people were buying more than they needed and throwing too much away.
在丹麦，一位名叫SelinaJuul的妇女一直在努力解决这个问题。她多年前从俄罗斯搬来，看到超市里琳琅满目的食品，她感到很惊讶。但是，尽管有这么选择，她发现人们买的还是比实际需要的多，造成人们扔掉很多。
She convinced some supermarkets to stop selling their items in bulk so that people bought only what they needed. She produced a leftovers cookbook and she's now set up an education programme in schools. This has helped create a significant 25% reduction in food waste, which shows that something can be done.
她说服一些超市停止批量销售商品，这样人们只买需要的东西。她制作了一本剩菜烹饪书，目前还在学校建立了一个教育项目。这已经帮助显著减少了25%的食物浪费。这表明我们还是可以对此有所作为的。
Clearly, we need to think twice when we put something in our shopping trolley, and when we're at home we should make the most of the food we have - using recipes that use up our leftovers or even sharing our excess food with our friends and neighbours.
显然，当我们挑选商品时，要三思而后行。在家时，我们应该充分利用所拥有的食物——不留剩饭剩菜，甚至与朋友和邻居分享多余的食物。
词汇表
edible
可食用的
efficient
效率高的
leftover
剩饭，剩菜
chuck
扔
contributor
贡献者
discard
扔掉
sell-by-date
出售截至日期
buy one get one free
买一赠一
culprit
罪魁祸首
landfill
垃圾填埋厂
rot
腐烂
greenhouse gas
温室气体
abundance
大量，充足
bulk
批量，大量
cookbook
食谱
think twice
三思而后行
excess
多余的