Screening Room

This “inconvenient” documentary delves into the issue of food waste generated by the world’s advanced economies.

The food waste issue is growing more serious by the day, and resolving it will take more than just consumer campaigns to buy only as much as we can eat without leaving any waste. It is a matter with more fundamental hidden causes rooted in overproduction and the contradictions of our distribution structures. Vegetables are among of our most representative food items, but over half of them end up thrown in the garbage in the name of preserving freshness on the way from the field to the dinner table. To make sure that the products on display appear perfect, supermarkets will throw out any vegetables that show so much as a tiny blemish or a single wilted leaf; dairy products are recalled with days still left before their expiration date. The director uses interviews with people from various walks of life to gain an understanding of this absurd and irrational state of affairs. In the process, he starkly shows how all of us—from supermarket salespeople and managers to wholesalers, merchandise checkers, farming/forestry/seafood ministers, farmers, EU officials, and consumers—are complicit in sustaining the current system, and ultimately in contributing to excess greenhouse gas emissions.