BBC 6分钟英语学习 反对食物浪费

Hello. This is six minute English from BBC, learning English.

I'm Neil, and I'm fan. 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

and some two week old fish, all past its used by date, the date printed on the food containers showing how long it is safe to eat.

Oh, I'm guilty of wasting food now, me and many others.

According to the UN one, 3rd 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 program, 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 Rubab?

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.

Or Sophina Archai 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, hosophina explains her project to Jomatis, reporter for BBC World Service program People fixing the world.

So Hosophina, 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 capritos, is 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.

By what? It half that price.

So I didn't have any way of controlling how I was going to say.

It just depended on these people coming.

And a lot of these carredos are are kind of commissioned by the supermarkets.

All this leads to food waste, because it's really hard for farmers like Hosafena to predict witch crops.

They're going to be able to sell.

Hosophina used to sell her food to carreros or middlemen, people who buy food directly from the grower and make money by selling it on to customers.

Hosophina 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 hosifina'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 used by date and might not be safe to eat.

But according to green designers Salvega Peakstice, it, these used by dates aren't always accurate, something she discussed with BBC World Services People fixing the world Well, foodmakers 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 gonna get stored at the wrong temperature, so they have to blanket apply a shorter date to protect consumers.

Supermarkets set cautious used by dates for the worst case scenario, the worst case that could possibly happen in a situation, e.g.

someone getting sick and dying of food poisoning.

In other words, they blanket apply.

Used 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 loss 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 at Rubab, 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 onto 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. Six new English from the BBC UH.

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