Let's think with our heads instead of our stomachs

Whatever your ethnicity or the language you speak, whether left, right, tall or stupid, there is one thing we all share: the need to eat. Food is a vital resource only edged off top spot by water. You can sleep on the floor, survive with no roof, do without sex (tell me about it!) or never see another Barça match, but if you do not ingest nutrients within a certain limited time (40 days is about the maximum, I think) it is game over as an individual and a species.

Which makes our blasé attitude to food all the more unforgiveable. We have just come through a festive period in which food plays a key role, when we stuff ourselves with edible luxuries until we literally can't get any more into our stomachs. Obesity, and its attendant problems like (avoidable) Type 2 Diabetes, is running rampage through our society, and is a direct consequence of the overconsumption of processed foods. Yet, one of the most far-reaching consequences of us taking food for granted is the thousands of kilos of perfectly edible products that are wasted every day.

You can read the extent of food waste in our report that begins on page 20. There, you can find out about how much of the food we buy ends up in the bin, about how our economy encourages overproduction, about how aesthetic considerations lead to entire fields of produce never being harvested but left to rot. You can also find out about what all of us can do to cut down on the food we waste and how our shopping habits can help to turn the tide.

I don't think it is something we need to feel guilty about. Given the nature of the consumer society we find ourselves immersed in and given our society's knack for producing prosperity, it is understandable that we have come to unthinkingly treat food as if it were a cheap unlimited resource. However, once we know the truth, think about it and become more educated about it, then it becomes our obligation to act in a more responsible manner. We have become used to leaving everything to powerful institutions and despair at what we can do to change things. Yet, the issue of food waste is something we have a say over. As consumers, our habits directly dictate the behaviour of the authorities and big business. It may be the only power left to us, so let's not waste that, too.