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Is there any bread? to drink beer

A British brewery collects unnecessary bread scraps and turns them into a quality boutique beer. An excellent solution to the problem of food waste

44 percent of UK bread production is wasted along the food chain. Photo: Mike Kenneally.
44 percent of UK bread production is wasted along the food chain. photograph: Mike Kenneally.

By Maya Falah, Angle, Science and Environment News Agency

Have you ever wondered what happens to the "kisses" of the loaf of bread in bakeries and cafes - the pieces of bread that are not aesthetically suitable to be used as a slice in the sandwich they serve us, but are just as tasty and good as all the other bread? And what happens to the loaves of bread that were not sold and remained on the shelf at the end of the day? Or the breads in the supermarket, whose marketing date has passed, but they are definitely still good to eat? In most cases these residues find their way to the trash. In Britain, for example, almost half of the bread produced (44 percent) is lost along the "food chain" - production, transportation, supply and purchase - and ends up in landfills, where it adds sin to crime by emitting methane gas (which is harmful to the planet 30 times more than carbon dioxide).

The fact that while billions of people around the planet suffer from hunger, a third of the world's food is wasted is intolerable. The environmental cost is also unbearably heavy: food production requires many resources (water, land, fuel, fertilizer, etc.) and it also costs the earth huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. If you add up the amounts of greenhouse gas emissions that are released into the air only from the amount of food that is wasted in the world, you come to the conclusion that these are smaller in size than the total emissions released by China and the USA - that is, if food waste were a country, it would be The third most polluting country in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

Tristram Stewart, a serial and creative British entrepreneur, decided try and put an end to it to this waste and turn the orphaned bread scraps into a delicious beer. Stewart has been fighting the problem of food waste for more than ten years. After writing two books on the subject, he founded Argon in 2009 Feedback (in English a play on words that means "to feed back") who organized campaigns and activities to reduce the loss. Stewart promises that 100 percent of the profits of "Toast" will be transferred to the organization, and will be reinvested in finding additional solutions to the problem and conducting campaigns aimed at raising awareness of it and preventing unnecessary food production in the first place - the best way to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that accompany food production and the resources used to grow and produce it.

The problem of food loss is now a problem on a global scale. The food that is lost makes up about a third of all the food produced in the world and this has very negative economic, environmental and social consequences. in 2016 Thrown in a food bin in Israel with a value of NIS 19.5 billion (An amount that is greater than the budget allocated, for example, to the Ministry of Transportation and Road Safety for 2017-2018, which is only NIS 18.1 billion). Various bodies, government and others, began to take this problem seriously. Two months ago, for example, it took placeThe Acton The first of its kind designed to find and develop technological solutions to food waste in Israel.

"Israel is in second place in terms of the amount of food thrown away per year out of the OECD countries," says Michal Bitterman, CEO of the TNS organization, which leads a project to prevent food waste in Israel. "Almost half of the wasted food goes down the drain in consumers' homes (an Israeli family of four throws away about 1,150 kilos of food each year) and that's why we established a laboratory for innovation and sustainability to reduce food waste in order to find solutions to the problem at its various stages, both with large companies and with consumers themselves".

Save 100 tons of bread

Bread is the most wasted food item in the UK. This is what prompted Stewart to launch in 2015 the Toast ("Toast"), a project in which the brewery also participated Hambleton Ales who agreed to take in unnecessary bread scraps from suppliers, and use them to produce beer. With this method, approximately one slice of bread is required for each of the bottles of beer they produce, which they now successfully sell to restaurants and stores across the country (you can also purchase them on the website of "Toast"). In the first 15 months of the project, they managed to save about 3.6 tons of bread from being thrown into the trash and buried in landfills.

"Toast" has been successfully operating in Britain for over a year, and Stewart is now ready to take the next brave step: to try to save the bread of the Americans as well. The United States throws away slightly less bread than its cousins ​​from the United Kingdom - the loss of food from bread in the United States is "only" about a third, but it is a huge amount of bread that is wasted, and which actually goes straight from the oven to the belly of the earth.

The goal, according to The crowdfunding campaign The new "Toast", in which they are persuading the Americans to invest in the project and also win a beer made, among other things, from fresh bread - is to save about 100 tons of bread from landfills in the USA within three years. "Toast" and Stewart will join other American organizations that are trying to fight the phenomenon and save food from a sealed fate in the landfill, such as Barnana - a snack made from bananas that were on their way from the plantation to the trash, andReGrained: EAT beer who make nutritious snacks from unnecessary grains left over in breweries.

Homemade beer

The beer of "Toast". Photo: toast.
The beer of "Toast". Photo: toast.

Of the 19.5 billion shekels we threw away in Israel this year in food, he claims Israel collection report We could have saved 8 billion. In Israel, too, it is important that more initiatives be established that try to deal with the "unnecessary" food that is thrown away at each of the stages of the chain - whether it happens with the farmers, on the way from the field to the supermarket, with the suppliers, in the restaurants or with us as the end consumers.

And in the meantime, if you have some leftover bread at home, you can use a "toast" recipe and make yourself a cold and delicious beer to pass the hot summer days with you. Although this is not a particularly simple recipe, those who know how to make home-brewed beer can enrich their favorite beer recipe with the bread left at home: all you have to do is replace some of the grains with dried breadcrumbs. In the recipe for toast, for example, out of 5.8 kilograms and five types of grains, the brewer's pharmacist uses 1.5 kilograms of breadcrumbs. To these, different types of hops are added in the "toast", which adds to the beer its familiar bitter aroma and taste, and which is also used as a preservative. This way you can feel good about yourself that not only are you sitting down and enjoying your homemade beer - but you also managed to prevent food waste.

Comments

  1. I added "as" so they wouldn't say I was trying to impersonate Blizovsky.

    For miracles - real scientists do not exaggerate because they present scientific facts and not interpretation.
    Those who exaggerate are politicians and not scientists - but sometimes politicians recruit scientists to their side.
    That's why in every article I try to read between the lines.
    I am not saying that the situation is not serious - in my opinion the pollution situation of the entire planet and of our country in particular is very bad.
    I don't think that the Kyoto or Paris agreement will change anything and benefit the planet in any way because they allow countries to continue polluting and instead pay others... (as I already told before about the African farmer and his pump).
    If they were talking about really developing other means of energy or laws that really force the industry to reduce pollution - like they did with the hole in the ozone - they would ban the use of Freon gas, and like they did with asbestos and so on. So maybe it would have really helped something - and industrial pollution needs to be reduced in all respects, not just FDH, which is the least worst polluter of all the others.
    You also need to educate about minimalistic consumption because the industry that emits CO2 does it to create for the consumer society all the unnecessary nonsense that people buy, all the stupid plastics, every new car, every new TV you buy, with all its packaging and its transport and everything else causes more emissions of pollution
    People should be encouraged to recycle, use less plastic and generally consume less.
    For example, there is a new trend called minimalists - I am very much in favor of it, because it is something that can really reduce environmental pollution more than the Kyoto/Paris agreement, which is a total fraud and a cover-up for the Europolitical Coractoids and gives ammunition to the tweets of the blond cowboy who rules the world.

  2. my father
    It's your mistake. The situation is very serious! It's better for players to present, because they do this very well.

    Can you please give an example of a scientist who exaggerates?

  3. to the gatekeeper
    First - you forgot to mention the main thing that a beer brewery emits a lot of carbon dioxide.
    Second - if that's your taste, junk beer made from old bread will be good for your health.
    Third - I never wrote that there is no global warming and I never wrote that it is not a fact that there is global warming.
    The debate is between tycoons of producers of products for the utilization of alternative energy, or countries that want a reduction in oil prices, and tycoons of oil producers such as those that Trump represents. Both sides are tycoons who are trying to brainwash, I do not side with either side.

  4. for miracles
    I wrote in the passage that there is no debate that the earth is warming. I also wrote that I agree with the opinion that man is responsible for air pollution for PADF emissions and that carbon monoxide is responsible for the greenhouse effect, and I have no argument about that.
    I just pointed out that there are also those who do not think so for one reason or another, including scientists, and there is such a debate, that politics, there is a lot of money, there is excessive intimidation, and there are attempts at brainwashing and propaganda, silencing and flooding the network with propaganda of one kind or another (from both sides) .
    Nothing more.
    I don't like attempts at brainwashing, and I don't like propaganda disguised as science, and who hire bad movie actors (like Caprio and Schwarzenegger) to explain to me in movies with a lot of effects about scientific facts that they don't understand anything about. Nor that they set up pseudo-scientific websites that flood the net with such articles. (even if they are right)
    And not exaggerated apocalyptic theories that only aim to add fuel to the fire.

  5. Some answers for the troll father,
    Since it relies on research, then:
    There are studies that have shown that flatulence is not caused by drinking beer,
    There are studies and theories that explain the fact of warming,
    Global warming is a fact, not a theory.
    Since the production of beer began about 4000 years ago there is someone to blame,
    The debates at the UN were between advocates of action to stop the warming
    and those sent by tycoons of polluting industries,
    Such a messenger is also the President of the United States,
    Feeding animals with bread harms them and causes methane emissions,
    And finally, brainwashing can only be done to those who have something to wash.

  6. my father
    The debates at the UN were not about the warming itself, but about the ways of treatment.
    Climate scientists agree on warming. The deniers are, almost always, people who are far from their area of ​​expertise.
    The science behind the warming is simple - EPA is a definite greenhouse gas.
    The evidence is solid - warming exists, the amount of COXNUMX is increasing, and the source of COXNUMX is man.

    Oh - and the US president is not the genius of the generation... if he is a source of authority for you, then you have a serious problem!

  7. to "pay attention"
    Please note that a brewery is an industrial plant, sometimes quite large, that emits a lot of air pollution, especially carbon dioxide.
    Brewing beer is really not like grandma using yesterday's bread.
    And beer is one of the causes of violence, car accidents, alcoholism in the world, as well as obesity, and probably also obesity and heart attacks, for the sake of the environment it is better that they continue to do with the old bread what they do with it today - feed for animals.

  8. for miracles
    There is no need to prove that there is such a conspiracy - there were debates at the UN, there were publications about hiding information from the Kyoto Commission, a lot was written about it, and the President of the United States also thinks it is a conspiracy - so there is smoke.
    Regarding the fire - I already wrote that I don't deny the theory of global warming, I'm even in favor of reducing air pollution, and I'm even active on the issue at my workplace (maybe that's why the issue is close to my heart).
    I just don't like a lack of objectivity, I'm very sensitive to attempts at non-objective brainwashing, and propaganda and that's on any subject (for example, propaganda on the subject of obesity also makes me jump - see for example my answer to a talkbackist called A - on another forum).

  9. my father
    You have never been able to substantiate your claims about the "global warming conspiracy".
    Do it, or do yourself a favor and stop this nonsense.

  10. My father's grandmother, who used to grind yesterday's leftover bread to make fish cakes for tomorrow, was probably a "left-European-political-Kyoto-Correct agent".

  11. Following on from my previous response - this is another propaganda article of the website Zivala which claims to be a news agency for science and the environment and in fact is an agency for spreading Tibetan and left-European-political-Kyoto-correct propaganda.

  12. Beer is made by cooking grains and then fermenting the starch with the help of yeast that produces carbon dioxide and alcohol. Some of this carbon dioxide is emitted during fermentation, some remains in the beer and creates these bubbles that later fall in the belches of the beer drinkers, and some remains in the stomachs of the drinkers and is emitted from below along with other greenhouse gases.
    Beer production only increases the emission of greenhouse gases and does not decrease them.
    Instead of giving the bread to the cows, they give it to yeast that produces carbon dioxide and alcohol.
    The beer industry uses "cooking" heating that emits greenhouse gases.
    The only one who benefits from the poor is the beer maker who saves buying wheat/barley to make beer.
    There is a mixture of vegan propaganda with greenhouse gas propaganda and nothing else.

  13. Once upon a time old bread was used for filata fish. It was the ultimate food for poor families: the cheapest fish and leftover bread.
    The problem with the program is that most of the bread is thrown in the trash at home. In the US, most bread is kept frozen in supermarkets and only goes on the shelf when needed. From the houses it is impossible to collect the bread effectively.
    And a side story: a few decades ago, a man would pass by our house and look for old bread in the garbage. After some time, the tenants began to leave the old bread in a bag hanging on the wall and not in the bin. After a few months someone asked him: Don't you look like a person who lacks food? Nicely dressed, probably in a lucrative position? And the man said: In World War II I was a partisan. We fought the Nazis and hid in the forest. Food was hard to come by, and most of the food we ate was the meat of wild birds we hunted. So I vowed that if I made it out alive, I would feed birds with leftover bread. And so I do.

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