If you were born prior to 1980, you likely had a parent say that you needed to eat your dinner because people were starving in Africa.

And it was true. The Malthusian boom and bust lamented by Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, and other doomsday prophets in the 1970s had gripped journalists and therefore popular culture.(1)

Yet beginning in 1980 scientists began to run the table on breakthroughs that have headed off starvation. Now no progressive seriously discusses mandatory sterilization or abortion and a Planetary Regime to enforce them the way Ehrlich and Holdren did in "Ecoscience"; the worry instead is that everyone is getting too fat thanks to science making it possible to grow food so affordably.

And there is now rampant food waste, much different than a time when my parents could pick a carcass so clean piranhas were impressed. The United Nations estimates that rich countries discard as much food as sub-Saharan Africa produces in total- about 230 million tons per year. 

What if we all ate the excess food? Would we better off or worse?

The obvious end-run around the yes or no question is to grow just enough but that is not how markets work. America is the most scientific country in the world, and takes more medication, which is why it is possible for other countries to benefit from new drugs. In order for other countries to benefit from any science and technology, it first has to be abundant in rich countries. 

Abundance means more waste. In the EU, regulations dictate everything, including the shape, size and appearance of 36 fruits and vegetables. So it was illegal for supermarkets to sell carrots that are forked. Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, was not allowed to sell his own "knobbly" organic carrots. It was so ridiculous that in 2008 England went into open rebellion against the EU just 15 years after joining it.

Even today, when retailers are allowed to sell ugly fruit (at a discount, of course) a third of their food goes to waste. 

This leads to an obvious question, in a culture where health care looming disasters must compete with climate change looming disasters for media attention; which is worse for the world, eating all the excess food or throwing it away? The ecological footprints are the same because the food has already been grown.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2019.00126/full

https://www.sciencecodex.com/fat-land-estimating-ecological-costs-overea...


(1) And still do. In Science magazine's hyped paper on the Bird Apocalypse (with hashtag and website created a month in advance) their journalist got a quote from Ehrlich, who said what he is supposed to say about every doomsday prophet, while the New York Times beatified Rachel Carson yet again. The study has already been debunked as nonsense, estimates from 50 years ago may or may not be valid, just like today, and the authors made sure to include invasive species that were killed off to protect natives - because it's about creating a movement, not science.