Twice as much food as previously estimated, or a third of all food available for human consumption, is wasted.

Researchers from Wageningen University & Research have published a study that suggests consumers are wasting twice as much food as initially estimated.

They also found a link between affluence and food waste; the more money a person makes, the more food they tend to waste. They also discovered that people in poorer nations begin wasting more food as they earn more money.

Experts have identified food waste as one of the top sustainability problems globally and the United Nations environment program has a goal of eliminating half of all food waste by 2030.

“Globally, if food waste could be represented as its own country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter, behind China and the US,” the agency said on its website.

“The resources needed to produce the food that becomes lost or wasted has a carbon footprint of about 3.3 billion tons of CO2.”

Previous Figures

In the past, the the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that about one-third of all food produced goes to waste.

The FAO came to this conclusion by looking at how much food is lost during production and how much is lost in the kitchen. By looking at these sources of waste, the UN proposed that the average person tosses out roughly 214 calories worth of food per day.

New Study

The new study focused solely on what happens to food when it reaches the consumer. Waste that’s created through the production process wasn’t analyzed.

The researchers found that it’s actually twice as worse. They believe people are actually wasting 527 calories worth of food a day.

Although the new study from the Dutch researchers is shocking, it isn’t perfect. Researchers only looked at 67% of the global population, and didn’t look at data from countries like the United States, a nation already estimated to be a big food waster.

Other analysts have been skeptical about the calculation method as well, since much of the information had to be inferred due to a lack of hard data from nations around the world.