Waist Makes Waste

According to CBS This Morning (November 1^st), Americans are wasting about $144 billion dollars of food a year. Leftovers, stuff we bought but do not fully consume, stuff that went bad on our shelves or refrigerators, restaurant excess… not to mention the tons of “expired” and/or spoiled products not sold in grocery stores plus tons and tons of farm waste. Add to that the massive garbage collection and disposal issues, landfills running out of space, and the problem is simply compounded. “America [is] wasting 40% of their food—enough to fill the Rosebowl Stadium every day. At the same time 1 in 6 go hungry every day, and we grow enough food to feed them.”Bananabank.org.  

“In fact, if we were able to recover all of our wasted food, we could provide a 2,000-calorie diet to 84% of the population, said Dr. Roni Neff, a Johns Hopkins University researcher who led a first-ever study examining the nutrients we're tossing in the trash. 

“It's an ugly part of American culture, our throw away culture, and it's costing us time, money and our environment. Add the fact our waste often is filled with important nutrients many people lack in their diets, such as dietary fiber, Vitamin D and calcium, and the problem is compounded.

“‘Wasted food is a very serious issue at this point,’ said Neff, a program director at the Johns Hopkins University Center for a Livable Future. ‘We're throwing away so much money and so many resources and so much potential nutrients that can make our lives better.’” USA Today, May 16^th, citing a report published in the Journal of Nutrition and Dietetics (based on 2012 U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics).  

When you think that the average North Korean subsists on a below-global standard of 1100 calories a day, the size of America’s wasted largesse is even more staggering. Simply, according to the above report, we waste more than that figure per American every day – a whopping 1200 calories of waste for every one of us. 

“It places America in a sad juxtaposition: We're hemorrhaging our food supply as communities suffer without enough to get through the day or access to fresh fruits and vegetables.  Feeding America, a hunger-relief organization, said in 2015 about 42 million Americans lived in food insecure households, which are homes with a lack of access or availability to enough food to lead a healthy life…

“So why do we throw so much away? And is it a solution to our food scarcity problems?... As Neff explains, people are tossing food out with good intentions. However, their belief foods are unsafe because they don't appear as fresh sometimes isn't grounded in reality. A 2013 report found by “Harvard University and the National Resources Defense Council found Americans throw away billions of food simply because they're confused about food expiration date labels… Among the most wasted foods, Neff said, were seafood, fruits and vegetables… ‘The foods that are particularly wasted are fresh foods that tend to be more perishable,’ she said. ‘That's a lot of money that people are using to feed their family that's going straight to the landfill.’ 

“So how do we prevent this?... ‘One of the biggest things is just really being aware of it,’ said Neff, who completed the study with John Hopkins fellow and doctoral candidate Marie L. Spiker…. That involves creating and sticking to a shopping list and being proactive about eating leftovers. She also wishes for retailers to bring more ‘imperfect’ food to the market, those fruits and veggies that don't look great, but are still fine to eat.

“While using leftover food to help feed the hungry is noble, Neff suggests it's not the antidote to food scarcity… ‘Although only a portion of discarded food can realistically be made available for human consumption,’ said Neff, efforts to redistribute surplus foods where appropriate and prevent food waste in the first place could increase the availability of nutrients for Americans, while saving money and natural resources." USA Today. 

It’s about the law of supply and demand. We demand more, but when we get the products, we waste them. So it’s not so much about donating our food waste to the poor as it is to moving that excess food, to those who need it most, farther up the supply chain before it become marginal. If we’re not going to eat it anyway, and if we learn not to buy that which will inevitably be tossed in the garbage, life gets better for just about everybody.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I think that most Americans would like to save a few bucks while helping those who might otherwise go hungry, particularly children who are still growing.