Ensuring Sustainability of Baking Industry in North Macedonia

Abstract

Deeply immersed in North Macedonian diet, bakery products are the key drive to a nationally important bakery industry. Cultural impacts lead to a traditionalist approach towards bread consumption and sustainable bakery products and practices are slow at penetrating the market. Nevertheless, growing awareness of health benefits, as well as a necessity to comply with EU legislation will be the impetus towards developing more sustainable bakery practices. Reducing food waste is at the core of sustainability due to the possibility for its revalorization. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, an estimated 1.3 billion tons of food are thrown away globally each year. It is nearly one third of all food produced for human consumption and this amount is more than enough to feed all the 815 million hungry people in the world. With staple dietary products such as bakery, the link between the UN goals of fighting world hunger and maintaining a healthy diet with more sustainable, environmentally-friendly industrial processes and products is clear. This chapter gives an overview of the current situation with sustainable practices, particularly food waste management in N. Macedonia, as well as recommendation of how to ameliorate the problem based on global state of the art practices.