Get out your poster board and your markers because you are going to want to take some serious, if not large and colorful notes on this topic -- food waste. Sounds boring, sounds kind of gross, but I'm here to tell you that it's a problem, my friends. Guess what percentage of the food supply in the U.S. goes uneaten?? Guess.
Oh! Then guess how much money a family of four tosses out in food each year.
You're going to be astounded. Here are the facts:
Newser broke down the L.A. Times story on food waste in America nicely, and derived that:
- About 40% of food in the US supply chain goes uneaten.
- A family of four tosses $2,275 worth of food each year, which translates into 20 pounds per person each month.
- Americans waste 50% more food today than in the 1970s, and 10 times as much as people in Southeast Asia.
- Supermarket produce aisles are bountiful at a cost: Some $15 billion in fruits and vegetables goes unsold each year.
- Uneaten food is the single biggest component of municipal solid waste in landfills.
Gah! Forty percent of food from farm to fork ends up in a landfill? That's disheartening.
So how can you help? Well, for one thing, you can scare your kids with that handy poster you made by pointing out that if they don't clean their plates, the food is going to go to waste, and that's not fair. Just look at those stats, Junior!
If you're not into scare tactics (what are you, some sort of saint?), you could simply avoid over-portioning your family's meals. Don't make more than anyone can eat. Easier said than done, I know, but try a few times by making less than necessary and see how that pans out. If someone's still hungry after dinner, I'm sure you've got a cracker or a piece of fruit lying around.
When we're tossing out over two grand a year in food, and when our trash piles are becoming more and more overwhelmed by edibles when parts of the world go hungry, we gotta try something, right?
Right.
Do these stats surprise you?
Photo via miamism/Flickr
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Comments 19
The only thing that suprises me with these statistics is that hunger in our own country/around the world, is still a problem.
How very sad.
Better it goes to waste than goes to waist. :)
We also have a compost, that we use to fertilize our garden, which grows some of our produce. So we recycle food basically. We also give some scraps to the 3 dogs, 2 cats, and 1 rat. Someone is eating it, therefore its not wasted, and we're spending less on bagged pet food.
Its crazy the amount that they're saying the average family wastes each year.
Or you can buy and prepare less food.
it's hard for me and my daughter (i'm a single mom, so it's just us two) to eat everything in the large quantities that they are sold. so i freeze A LOT of food. i wash and chop up vegetables (onion, bell pepper, cilantro, carrots, etc) and fruit (any berries, grapes, etc.) and put them in freezer ziplocs and then keep all of the ziplocs in one larger tupperware container and have them ready in the freezer. that way i can just use what we need for each meal instead of wasting half of a bell pepper, etc. same goes for larger meals like lasagna, etc. it's pretty much impossible to make a lasagna for one adult and one 3 year old. so i freeze half of it, we eat 1/4 of it for dinner and the other 1/4 for lunch the next day.
I was raised in a "don't waste food household." So were my parents, both sets of grandparents having been raised during the Depression. And you know how we had less waste and were not overweight? By buying and cooking only what we needed. And if there WERE leftovers (rarely), they got sent with us or Dad/Grandpa to work the next day. Simple. I worked at a fast-food restaurant as a teen and I was shocked by how much "waste" food was being thrown away. Most of it was tossed because it was either made by accident (like a hamburger that somebody decided they didn't want, but was made before they decided it) or that had passed the "toss time." This food was perfectly fresh and edible, it just wasn't as fresh as something hot off the grill. I couldn't believe it. It was just thrown away. Perfectly good food. THAT disgusted me.