More than 300 Gold Coasters were treated to a delicious three course meal yesterday as Australia’s leading food rescue organisation Oz Harvest teamed up with the United Nations to raise awareness on global food loss and waste reduction.

As part of its Think.Eat.Save initiative, volunteers and chefs from the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre cooked and served up the feast, which included 200kg discarded fruit and vegetables turned into lip-smacking carrot soup and vegetable korma, as well as tasty carrot cake donated by Goldstein’s Bakery.

In its inaugural year in Gold Coast City, the global Think.Eat.Save campaign has been running for three years in Australia and is supported by a host celebrity chefs including Matt Moran.

Gold Coast Oz Harvest Manager, Lee Danahay said the Gold Coast City event, which is set to become an annual occurrence, had been a huge success.

“We have had more than 300 people come along today and the support from local businesses has been amazing,” she said.

“The event will get bigger and better every year. Everyone that came along this year I’m sure will come along next year and bring more family and friends and we can grow this into a full event for the Coast.

“Our van hit the road in November 2013 and we are rescuing 4,000kg of food waste per week, but there is more food out there than we can rescue with our current van. We have a second van on its way which means we can potentially be rescuing 8,000kg per week.”

Australia wastes four million tonnes of food per annum equating to roughly $8-10 billion. As a nation we produce enough food to feed approx. 60 million people, yet two million people still rely on food relief every year.

OzHarvest is the first perishable food rescue organisation in Australia to collect quality excess food from commercial outlets and deliver it, direct and free of charge, to 600 charities providing much needed assistance to vulnerable men, women and children across Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Newcastle and Perth.

For more information on Oz Harvest visit http://www.ozharvest.org/.