food #firstworldproblem

As we, UNLEASH participants, started mulling over what we were supposed to do in the next few days of innovation, the organisers gave us a glimpse of how Denmark is addressing the SDGs.

One of our stops in the Food theme was Wefood, Denmark's first food surplus supermarket. Food surplus... that's such a first world problem! For someone from the third world, where food insecurity is the main concern, I found a conceptual discordance to the whole idea. And I wasn't alone. After the visit, I was in conversation with a tomato farmer in Kenya and a youth capacity builder from Liberia... they had similar reactions. I then listened in on conversations of people from more developed countries and I got the impression that to these participants, the Wefood concept made sense.

So, I had my first UNLEASH lesson handed to me on a silver platter: I had to keep an open mind and a listening ear because I needed to understand the context on which these types of companies try to contribute to the achievement of the SDGs. In so doing, I could adapt solutions that I propose to the target audience set during the innovations lab.

In essence, Denmark produces more food than what its people can consume (perhaps because of good climate conditions, hardy plants and animal adapted to the weather, good postharvest practices, and a relatively low human population). Wefood set out to help reduce food waste by being the outlet where people could buy (at lowered prices) food products and supplements that are close or have just passed their best before dates. The proceeds of their sales partly go to a fund that helps feed poor people in developing countries. All these contribute to SDG 2, on food security.

From a food quality standpoint, I was thinking that if it's possible to sell products after their BBDs, wouldn't it be much easier to just lengthen their shelf-life? A food technologist pointed out, however, that the shelf-life declared on a package just wasn't about the nutritious and the microbiological aspects; it's also about the organoleptic properties of the product. Maybe after the BBD, the food colour or its texture changes. The company selling the product may then find a lot of complaints for sub-par products that are actually still good to eat. It's very fascinating to see the combination of science and business being mixed into the Wefood story.

And that brought me to my second UNLEASH lesson, again on a silver platter: our solutions, if they are to be of high impact, must be practical and business savvy... we can't limit them to technologies that are difficult to implement and cost more than they are worth.

An eye-opener, that trip to Wefood was. First world problems can jog us into thinking about context and about practicality... because there are many possible solutions to the problem of food security. And we have til 2030 to alleviate it.