Food wasted per person visualized

Every person on Earth wastes an average of 353 lbs (160 kg) of food annually — the equivalent of throwing away double their own body weight in food each year.

The Data:

The data is sourced from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which reported in 2011 that the world wastes 1.3 billion metric tons of food annually — one-third of all food produced for human consumption. This includes loss at every stage: from farms and transport to retail and households.

Related:

🛒 In high-income countries, more than 40% of food waste occurs at the retail and consumer level.

🌾 In low-income countries, most food waste happens during harvest, storage, and transport due to lack of infrastructure.

💸 Global food waste costs the economy over $940 billion per year.

🌍 Cutting food waste is among the top 3 solutions to reverse climate change, according to Project Drawdown.

🥕 The amount of food wasted could feed 2 billion people — more than double the number of undernourished people worldwide.