One Billion Meals Wasted, 783 Million People Going Hungry Every Day, Says United Nations 

More than 1 billion meals are wasted across the world each day while nearly 800 million people go hungry, a new United Nations report has found.

The world wasted 1.05 billion metric tons of food in 2022, meaning about a fifth of the food available to people was squandered by households, restaurants and other parts of the food service and retail sectors.

This is on top of the 13% of the world’s food lost as it makes its journey from farm to fork. In total, about a third of all food goes to waste during the production process.

These waste figures are particularly stark when contrasted with the report’s findings that about a third of the world’s population faces food insecurity and 783 million are affected by hunger.

The staggering statistics, published Wednesday in the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Food Waste Index Report 2024, raise questions about the world’s ability to distribute the food it produces and highlights the role of food waste as a driver of climate change, according to UNEP Director Inger Andersen.