Fast food...

I dunno what it's like round at yours but we can barely afford to buy food to eat these days, never mind throwing it away. We're not alone, are we? Maybe we are.

Anyway, Gordon Brown, no doubt tucking into the fat cat G8 buffet right now, has done what a lot of politicians have done before him and no doubt will continue to do after him - blaming individuals when, quite patently, it's not my fault, your fault nor A N Other's fault. If [some] people are throwing food away at the rate of £8-worth a week, could it, perhaps, be because some of them have been persuaded to buy shit they don't actually need? Did I persuade them? Did you? Did I encourage gluttonous behaviour? Did I create the conditions that made people so careless about what they buy and fail to consume? Did I encourage and promote the growth of grain-based biofuels without any thought about the repercussions? Did you? Yet still I'm being urged to cut down on food waste. And so are you.

Via The Guardian, I have read today that "In the developing world, up to 40% of food harvested can be lost before it is consumed due to inadequate processing, storage and transport." (The Grauniad is quoting a Cabinet Office report). Now, I don't process, store nor transport food so don't hold me to task for that one. Is that one your fault? How much does that equate to a week? A month? A year? In a lifetime?

The real solution, of course, would be to radically rethink our behaviour. I'd be happy to eat bread and rice, if that's what it took to feed the additional 2.5bn mouths that will be open and waiting for a nosh over the next 50 years. Would you? Would Gordon Brown? Don't tell me its my fault. It isn't. But, and here's the rub, that doesn't mean I don't care. How's about you? What shall we do?