Food Waste

Food waste in America

We all waste some food but the statistics may surprise you of how much we do waste. According to a report done by the NRDC (National Resources Defense Council), Americans now waste 40 percent of their food. To put this in better perspective, if you spend 4200 a week on food as does the average 4 person house hold that comes up to $320 a month. Multiply this over a year and you get $3840 and over a 35 year period that most of us work that comes to a staggering $134,400. Keep in mind that this does not account for the meals you eat out or take in to consideration the inflation factor.

Getting food from our farms to our dinner plate eats up 10 percent of our total US energy budget, uses 50 percent of America’s land and uses 80 percent of all the fresh water used in our country. We take this one step further and it adds up to $165 billion a year for the US. If that doesn’t wake you up you need to also realize that the vast majority of this uneaten food is rotting and filling up our landfills and this, not other things, is responsible for large amounts methane emissions.

If we as American’s could just stop 15% of this loss, it could feed 25 million Americans every year! Lets take a look at the areas that are responsible for some of this loss.

In the farming sector our food is wasted in two separate areas. This first being food that is food that is never harvested and food that is lost between harvest and sale. The harvest loss could be because of public demand, lack of labor to harvest and food scares about particular foods due to news reports and recalls. WE in America waste plenty of food because of size, blemish level, weight and color. Quite simply put, we are picky so we throw it away. Most of these products are quite good and edible but are not marketable because of who we are, (Picky Americans). Grocery Outlet has made an entire business out of buying over runs and selling closeout food that was thought to not be sellable to Americans. Oh and by the way they now have a $960 million dollar business and 148 stores.

You’re going to love this one. We as Americans are so picky that lots of fruits and vegetables are lost every year because grocery stores overstock displays to make things look “pretty”. As such they over buy knowing that they will have most of their inventory rot before it is purchased and just add this cost to your grocery bill. But hey, we have to have those “pretty” displays, right? The popular grocery store in Berkeley California, aptly name Berkeley Bowl sells approximately $1500 work of near expired or damaged products by offering it on their special section for only $.99 per bag.

The average restaurant in America wastes about 19 percent of the food in America because the products expire in date but are perfectly edible. Another large portion of that food is wasted because the consumer buys the product and then throws much of it away. This is called “plate waste” and is a significant loss of food in America. Of course the simply solution is to serve less food but then the restaurants would lose revenues so we might as well waste more food at that stage too, right? The average diner in a restaurant in the US leaves 17% of their food on the plate. The big problem here is that portion sizes have grown huge in the past 30 years. From 1982 to 2003 the average pizza slice grew 70%! Just maybe that is another reason America is sooooo fat!

It’s not just restaurants that are at fault for all of this food loss, American families throw out approximately 25 percent of the food they buy.

Let me leave you with this. Many people think that date on your food is the gospel but nothing could be further from the truth. The “use by” and “best by” dates found on perishable and non-perishable foods are manufacture suggestions and DO NOT indicate food safety. The only exception to this rule is infant formula. The “use by” dates on these products is federally regulated and a few specific products in certain states.

Another interesting fact is that the average dinner plate has expanded 36 percent between 1960 and 2007. Does it seem like they are trying to sell you more than you need. Well genius, they are. And in America and the European nations this has become a huge problem. The Southeast Asian countries waste just 1/10 of what we do. Hey have you noticed they’re smaller people? We are just talking height, we are talking width.

Maybe it’s time we American’s start to eat to live not live to eat….na that’s a crazy thought.