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Despite record highs in world food production, the number of people going hungry globally continues to rise. More than 40 percent of fruits are thrown away — unattractive or spoiled items are immediately disposed of by groceries and supermarkets as they are deemed unsellable. We recently wrote about the French supermarket Intermarche’s product line — Les Fruits & Légumes Moches — which is produced entirely from fruit and veg deemed too ugly to sell. Now, FoPo food powder is another ingenious solution created by students at Lund University in Sweden, who plan to freeze-dry fruit immediately before it expires, creating a nutritious food product from what would otherwise have been waste, and increasing its shelf-life from two weeks to two years.

Although freeze-dried fruit is not a new product, FoPo is the first freeze drying facility aiming to work solely with produce that would otherwise be discarded. FoPo plan to purchase unsellable or second rate fruits from retailers and local markets, and process them into a nutritious powder which can be sold to manufacturers or directly to consumers to be used in soups, smoothies or baking. The creators also hope to add their product to relief packages — they envision it being used to help feed the hungry in the Philippines, where the operation will be based.

FoPo is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter and has already surpassed its USD 21,000 goal. How else can nearly expired food be salvaged?