Food waste and Scrabble
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2013
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Reports this week suggest that we are wasting 50 per cent of our food globally. It comes from a study by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in the UK. Ruth Alexander discovers why this number is out of date and is likely to be much lower than half. Also are the values on Scrabble tiles correct? They were first assigned in the 1930s. With our changing language do we need to reassess the values. We speak to Joshua Lewis, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego about his new value system ‘Valetta’ and ask John Chew, Co-President of the North American SCRABBLE Players Association, what he thinks.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:37.0 | Thank you for downloading from the BBC. |
| 0:40.0 | The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use go to BBCworldservice.com |
| 0:45.7 | slash podcasts. |
| 0:47.1 | Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service with me Ruth Alexander. |
| 0:55.0 | This week we find out what the consequences would be of changing the value of Scrabble |
| 0:59.7 | tiles. |
| 1:00.7 | I think there would be catastrophic outrage. |
| 1:04.0 | But before we upset the Scrabble Board, lots of you have been in touch |
| 1:08.0 | asking whether we waste 50% of all our food worldwide, as has been reported. It seems like a big |
| 1:14.8 | number and a lot of you are suspicious. So is it right? No. |
| 1:19.0 | Hi Wesley Stevenson's been on the case. The figure comes from an unlikely source, the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in the UK. |
| 1:27.0 | Their report is a complete blizzard of numbers on many different aspects of food waste at different stages of the food |
| 1:33.7 | processing chain and the figures are from a variety of sources that use a |
| 1:37.6 | variety of different methods to reach their conclusions but if you look at the |
| 1:41.8 | report there are actually two figures for overall global food waste. |
| 1:46.0 | One is up to 50 percent. So not 50 percent, up to 50 percent, and the other is 30 percent. |
... |
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