Food waste is already a problem for the planet today and will continue to become a problem in the future. From an online article, “Solid waste has become a global environmental issue due to rapid economic and population growth” (Salkova, 3), the fact that a lot of this waste is food waste or the waste left from the packaging of food is hard to take in. Social media is making the fight for less food waste, and to have less waste made from the food we consume, an individual fight. People are more likely to not waste as much food when they see others wasting food online, or when they see people also fighting against food waste and making more sustainable choices for food. The time of social media is both a blessing and a curse for the subject of food waste. The best way to end food waste is to teach kids at an early age the dangers of food waste. Here is a video about the impact of food waste on our pockets and our world, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ishA6kry8nc.
I watch a lot of theme park vloggers because I enjoy theme parks and like to watch other people enjoying the parks. Because of this I sometimes see videos where some vlogger or another tries every food in a new section of a theme park. They never actually finish the food on camera. They always insist that they actually eat all the food, however, there is no way that they do. It is just too much food for one person to eat that much food in one day. They take one bit for the camera and then they throw the rest out, maybe they share some with the camera person I don’t know. This is infuriating. The comment sections on all of these videos always point out the fact that the vloggers do not eat everything and yet we are all still watching these videos. It makes the person watching the videos not want to waste food in their lives. However, other influencers on social media are very good for making people actually care about food waste.
To point out how much of a problem food waste is becoming, “It is estimated that one-third of edible food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally each year.” (Young, 2.1). This causes the price of food to skyrocket, and it hits the poor of the world the hardest. Possibly the people who are manufacturing this food in the first place. You do not see many people from a place where they cultivate the corn or wheat that we consume in the United States making vlog posts about how much they waste the food that they collect for a living. However, many people in western countries including the United States have started to detest food waste, “studies have shown that people usually have strong reactions to food waste compared to other types of waste.” (Narvanen). Social media seems to be a way to make people change their mind about food waste but there are still many people like these vloggers that waste food in order to entertain people. Another very popular form of video entertainment on sites like YouTube is a mukbang. A mukbang, (Vijayaraghavan), is a video where someone eats an ungodly amount of food just for the viewer’s enjoyment. They started in Korea as a simpler thing where steamers ate and interacted with their audience while doing so. However, it has been transformed into people eating as much as possible, wasting as much food as they can for every video they make which of course has to be churned out as quickly as possible for maximum engagement with viewers.
Social media does not have to only be a bad thing for the fight against food waste however. Sites like twitter and Instagram have been effective for activating individuals to take action against the scourge. Many people see their favorite influencers take a stand against such things as food waste. The hashtags against food waste have seen a rise in use recently. (Salkova) The study done by Salkova also states this, “In addition, social networks are potentially powerful platforms to initiate behavioral change due to the large number of users. There are now 4.62 billion social media users worldwide”. (Salkova). The potential is there for social media to be a powerful tool in the fight against food waste. It has to be implemented correctly. A problem with this is that people who are not interested in stopping their own over consumption are not going to ever get social media posts directed at them about food waste. The same people that watch mukbangs and theme park vloggers are not going to get a video about why it is important to not waste food and the damage it is inflicting on the environment.
The United States and other developed countries are some of the biggest contributors to food waste. From an article, “developed countries generate more FLW than developing countries.” (van der Werf, 1) Because of the fact that in our country we want what we want to eat when we want it we produce too much food for the populace to ever actually eat. So much gets thrown out because of greed and the fact that places like restaurants do not want to lose profit because they did not have what a particular customer wanted on their visit to that particular restaurant. Developed countries get their food from developing countries and a lot. Still there is waste that people in developing countries would probably find despicable. We have feasts all the time. The idea of appetizers is probably sickening to someone from a poor country that cannot afford to feed their family half the time.
This is why it is important that we tell the kids as much as possible at the beginning of their education about food waste and the impact it has on the environment. Because we live in the United States here is a quote that is valuable to our situation, “In developed countries, FW (food waste) figures are higher at the end of the food chain as is loss of the resources associated with it. Hence waste prevention is particularly relevant at the end of the food chain” (Anton-Peset, 1) The article goes on to state that primary schools are a place where food waste is high. Kids are entertained by new media. Videos and tiktoks as well as any media that they are involved in are important to them and should be used in the classroom to teach them that this is a big problem and our type of country is a large contributing factor to the problem. By engaging children at an early age we can make sure that they understand that they directly have a role in helping out with how much food waste is produced in the United States.
If we can achieve this maybe the kids that learn about this will grow up to post things on social media about the dangers of food waste and will not become mukbang performers. They might make documentary films about the importance of treating the planet right and not wasting food and eating what you have in your kitchen as opposed to going out and increasing the demand for food to a level that is unsustainable for our planet. I don’t know what a video game would be like that is about food waste, however, I have played a game that was about how damaged the ocean has become because of the trash and war materials we put down there. It was incredibly inspiring and could work to activate someone to do better with the amount of waste in general, but especially food waste, they create in this world.
A video game where you hunt down people that consume too much seems too far. That would be counterproductive to creating a better world. However, a game where you work at a dump and look at how much waste, including food waste, we create as a country would be inspiring to future generations that are concerned about the amount of food waste we produce as a nation. The problem with creating media about food waste is that it is not a problem that has an easy solution. It is not sexy. There is no real way to sell the idea of eating less when so much is available all the time.
In conclusion, food waste is going to continue to be a problem for the world in the future. Developed countries such as the United States and others contribute higher to the amount of food waste, and thus solid waste, produced in the world. Social media is both ruining the chance that anything will get done about it as well as maybe activating individuals in the fight against food waste. The best way to stop food waste is to reach children early, before they have access to all of the internet, with media that is exciting to them.
Works Cited
Antón-Peset, Adriana, Maria-Angeles Fernandez-Zamudio, and Tatiana Pina. 2021. “Promoting Food Waste Reduction at Primary Schools. A Case Study” Sustainability 13, no. 2: 600. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020600
Närvänen, Elina. Mesiranta, Nina. Sutinen, Ulla-Maija. Mattila, Malla. Creativity, Aesthetics and Ethics of Food Waste in Social Media Campaigns. Journal of Cleaner Production. Volume 195. 2018. Pages 102-110.
Šálková, Daniela, Olesya Maierová, Lucie Kvasničková Stanislavská, and Ladislav Pilař. 2023. “The Relationship between “Zero Waste” and Food: Insights from Social Media Trends” Foods 12, no. 17: 3280. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods12173280
van der Werf P, Gilliland JA (2017), “A systematic review of food losses and food waste generation in developed countries”. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Waste and Resource Management, Vol. 170 No. 2 pp. 66–77, doi: https://doi.org/10.1680/jwarm.16.00026
Vijayaraghavan, A.P., Chattaraj, D. (2024). Food Fads, Digitality, and Culinary Tourism. In: Vijayaraghavan, A.P., Chattaraj, D. (eds) Critical Food Studies in Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-9302-0_5
Young, William, Russell, Sally V., Robinson, Cheryl A., Barkemeyer, Ralf. Can social media be a tool for reducing consumers’ food waste? A behaviour change experiment by a UK retailer. Resources, Conservation and Recycling. Volume 117, Part B. 2017. Pages 195-203.
Food waste is already a problem for the planet today and will continue to become a problem in the future. From an online article, “Solid waste has become a global environmental issue due to rapid economic and population growth” (Salkova, 3), the fact that a lot of this waste is food waste or the waste left from the packaging of food is hard to take in. Social media is making the fight for less food waste, and to have less waste made from the food we consume, an individual fight. People are more likely to not waste as much food when they see others wasting food online, or when they see people also fighting against food waste and making more sustainable choices for food. The time of social media is both a blessing and a curse for the subject of food waste. The best way to end food waste is to teach kids at an early age the dangers of food waste. Here is a video about the impact of food waste on our pockets and our world, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ishA6kry8nc.
I watch a lot of theme park vloggers because I enjoy theme parks and like to watch other people enjoying the parks. Because of this I sometimes see videos where some vlogger or another tries every food in a new section of a theme park. They never actually finish the food on camera. They always insist that they actually eat all the food, however, there is no way that they do. It is just too much food for one person to eat that much food in one day. They take one bit for the camera and then they throw the rest out, maybe they share some with the camera person I don’t know. This is infuriating. The comment sections on all of these videos always point out the fact that the vloggers do not eat everything and yet we are all still watching these videos. It makes the person watching the videos not want to waste food in their lives. However, other influencers on social media are very good for making people actually care about food waste.
To point out how much of a problem food waste is becoming, “It is estimated that one-third of edible food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally each year.” (Young, 2.1). This causes the price of food to skyrocket, and it hits the poor of the world the hardest. Possibly the people who are manufacturing this food in the first place. You do not see many people from a place where they cultivate the corn or wheat that we consume in the United States making vlog posts about how much they waste the food that they collect for a living. However, many people in western countries including the United States have started to detest food waste, “studies have shown that people usually have strong reactions to food waste compared to other types of waste.” (Narvanen). Social media seems to be a way to make people change their mind about food waste but there are still many people like these vloggers that waste food in order to entertain people. Another very popular form of video entertainment on sites like YouTube is a mukbang. A mukbang, (Vijayaraghavan), is a video where someone eats an ungodly amount of food just for the viewer’s enjoyment. They started in Korea as a simpler thing where steamers ate and interacted with their audience while doing so. However, it has been transformed into people eating as much as possible, wasting as much food as they can for every video they make which of course has to be churned out as quickly as possible for maximum engagement with viewers.
Social media does not have to only be a bad thing for the fight against food waste however. Sites like twitter and Instagram have been effective for activating individuals to take action against the scourge. Many people see their favorite influencers take a stand against such things as food waste. The hashtags against food waste have seen a rise in use recently. (Salkova) The study done by Salkova also states this, “In addition, social networks are potentially powerful platforms to initiate behavioral change due to the large number of users. There are now 4.62 billion social media users worldwide”. (Salkova). The potential is there for social media to be a powerful tool in the fight against food waste. It has to be implemented correctly. A problem with this is that people who are not interested in stopping their own over consumption are not going to ever get social media posts directed at them about food waste. The same people that watch mukbangs and theme park vloggers are not going to get a video about why it is important to not waste food and the damage it is inflicting on the environment.
The United States and other developed countries are some of the biggest contributors to food waste. From an article, “developed countries generate more FLW than developing countries.” (van der Werf, 1) Because of the fact that in our country we want what we want to eat when we want it we produce too much food for the populace to ever actually eat. So much gets thrown out because of greed and the fact that places like restaurants do not want to lose profit because they did not have what a particular customer wanted on their visit to that particular restaurant. Developed countries get their food from developing countries and a lot. Still there is waste that people in developing countries would probably find despicable. We have feasts all the time. The idea of appetizers is probably sickening to someone from a poor country that cannot afford to feed their family half the time.
This is why it is important that we tell the kids as much as possible at the beginning of their education about food waste and the impact it has on the environment. Because we live in the United States here is a quote that is valuable to our situation, “In developed countries, FW (food waste) figures are higher at the end of the food chain as is loss of the resources associated with it. Hence waste prevention is particularly relevant at the end of the food chain” (Anton-Peset, 1) The article goes on to state that primary schools are a place where food waste is high. Kids are entertained by new media. Videos and tiktoks as well as any media that they are involved in are important to them and should be used in the classroom to teach them that this is a big problem and our type of country is a large contributing factor to the problem. By engaging children at an early age we can make sure that they understand that they directly have a role in helping out with how much food waste is produced in the United States.
If we can achieve this maybe the kids that learn about this will grow up to post things on social media about the dangers of food waste and will not become mukbang performers. They might make documentary films about the importance of treating the planet right and not wasting food and eating what you have in your kitchen as opposed to going out and increasing the demand for food to a level that is unsustainable for our planet. I don’t know what a video game would be like that is about food waste, however, I have played a game that was about how damaged the ocean has become because of the trash and war materials we put down there. It was incredibly inspiring and could work to activate someone to do better with the amount of waste in general, but especially food waste, they create in this world.
A video game where you hunt down people that consume too much seems too far. That would be counterproductive to creating a better world. However, a game where you work at a dump and look at how much waste, including food waste, we create as a country would be inspiring to future generations that are concerned about the amount of food waste we produce as a nation. The problem with creating media about food waste is that it is not a problem that has an easy solution. It is not sexy. There is no real way to sell the idea of eating less when so much is available all the time.
In conclusion, food waste is going to continue to be a problem for the world in the future. Developed countries such as the United States and others contribute higher to the amount of food waste, and thus solid waste, produced in the world. Social media is both ruining the chance that anything will get done about it as well as maybe activating individuals in the fight against food waste. The best way to stop food waste is to reach children early, before they have access to all of the internet, with media that is exciting to them.
Works Cited
Antón-Peset, Adriana, Maria-Angeles Fernandez-Zamudio, and Tatiana Pina. 2021. “Promoting Food Waste Reduction at Primary Schools. A Case Study” Sustainability 13, no. 2: 600. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020600
Närvänen, Elina. Mesiranta, Nina. Sutinen, Ulla-Maija. Mattila, Malla. Creativity, Aesthetics and Ethics of Food Waste in Social Media Campaigns. Journal of Cleaner Production. Volume 195. 2018. Pages 102-110.
Šálková, Daniela, Olesya Maierová, Lucie Kvasničková Stanislavská, and Ladislav Pilař. 2023. “The Relationship between “Zero Waste” and Food: Insights from Social Media Trends” Foods 12, no. 17: 3280. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods12173280
van der Werf P, Gilliland JA (2017), “A systematic review of food losses and food waste generation in developed countries”. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Waste and Resource Management, Vol. 170 No. 2 pp. 66–77, doi: https://doi.org/10.1680/jwarm.16.00026
Vijayaraghavan, A.P., Chattaraj, D. (2024). Food Fads, Digitality, and Culinary Tourism. In: Vijayaraghavan, A.P., Chattaraj, D. (eds) Critical Food Studies in Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-9302-0_5
Young, William, Russell, Sally V., Robinson, Cheryl A., Barkemeyer, Ralf. Can social media be a tool for reducing consumers’ food waste? A behaviour change experiment by a UK retailer. Resources, Conservation and Recycling. Volume 117, Part B. 2017. Pages 195-203.
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