Food Waste Of Food

we’re wasteful. In order to find solutions for our trash problem, we must first admit that we are

The book, American Wasteland: How American Throw Away Nearly Half of Its Food, written by Jonathan Bloom, deeply describes the situation of food waste in America. The author, Bloom, starts off the book by mentioning that each day America squanders enough food tone fill up the Rose Bowl, the football stadium in Pasadena, California (xi). Bloom even brings out a specific number to prove that how much food were wasted in the United States, which is 160 billion pounds annually (xii). From that description and figure, we can see that food waste problem is really serious today.

The idea of wasting food is terrible idea. We all need food to survive and live on this planet. But, the problem is that some people just doesn't know how valuable food is because, we can think of ways to give it all away. There are starving people and there are 3 reasons food is being wasted.

The USDA claims that each year, 25.9 million tons of America’s food is thrown away, the equivalent to a quarter of the total amount produced. Nationally, the wasted food is a damaging financial setback, amounting to $1 billion just to get rid of during a time of ascending food prices, nonetheless (Oliver, 2007). Food waste has skyrocketed since 1970 at an astonishing 50% increase rate, yet according to the FAO, one-sixth of America doesn’t get enough to eat.

Bloom, J. (2010). American wasteland: How America throws away nearly half of its food (and what we can do about it). Cambridge: Da Capo Press.

Americans account for only five percent of the world’s population, but create half of the globe’s solid waste. Americans toss out the equivalent of $165 billion in food each year. All of that time, energy, and freshwater- for nothing. How can the United States, being so small in number, produce so much waste? Brad Plumer from the Washington Post documented a recent report from the Natural Resources Defense Council that attempts to track America’s food, from “farm to fork.” Plumer breaks the report down into seven different wasteful places along the American food production line: Farming, post-harvest and packing, processing and distribution, retail and grocery stores, food service and restaurants, households, and disposal.

The United States of America is arguably known as one of the most cultural and distinguished places around the world when dealing with food. There are so many contributions that give people this impression. People look at the United States as if it has the ideal method on how to deal with food, not knowing that the United States of America is quite wasteful. Although the United States of America has this awe-inspiring impression on people, you should not be fooled. America is a leading country for food waste, this is problematic because there are millions of people in this country that could use this food, and it is also harmful to the environment. In fact the United States of America ruins so much food it can fill up to seven hundred and thirty football stadiums. About as much as forty percent of food in America goes uneaten giving me the impression that America is wasteful when it comes to dealing with food.

In the U.S., we are blessed with a sufficient amount of resources, especially food. Food is literally at everyone’s fingertips; people can order food efficiently off of their cellphones, and due to this abundance, it has caused many Americans to be very wasteful with their food. According to feedingamerica.org, “An estimated 25 – 40% of food grown, processed and transported in the US will never be consumed.” Not only that, but rotting food causes more greenhouses gases to be released in the air

In an article from the New York Times titled, “From Farm to Fridge to Garbage Can” by Tara Parker-Pope, it is evident that Americans dominate in throwing away perfectly good food and answers the question: why should we care about food waste? Food waste is expensive, and many different research studies have proven that including the Garbage Project put on by the University of Arizona which tracked home food waste for three decades. It is estimated that nearly 25 percent of the food Americans bring into their homes is wasted. As economists, we figure that a family of four may spend approximately 175 dollars on groceries in a week, so they could undermine more than 40 dollars worth of food each week and 2,275 dollars a year. Putting 2,275 more dollars into every American family’s pockets could give them more of an opportunity to buy their fancy smart televisions or luxuries that everyone wants. In fact, the United States throws 48.3 billion dollars away every year along with about half of the water used to produce that same food states the UNEP website.

We were not actually discussing the issue of food waste but were talking about the amount of food families in different countries consume in a week. In order to make it clear my professor showed us pictures of different families from around the world with the amount of food they consumed in a week. The families in developing and underdeveloped countries consumed the least amount of food processed and the most out of those families were from Democratic Republic of Congo which is not very surprising but what was the most astonishing fact was that the United States ranked the number one spot in the amount of food intake per week. Comparative to the world’s two most populous countries in the world China and India, United States consume way far more food than it needs. All the surplus food does not serve any benefit to the hungry and poor, instead it is delivered to a dumpster. For example, at a farmers market in Asheville, North Carolina all the unsold tomatoes are dumped (Elizabeth Roytes). These unsold fresh tomatoes are dumped not because they are unsold or are not edible but because there isn’t enough space to store these

I think that us, in America waste much more food than we would like to admit, and it is hurting our economy and it is not helping other countries that need that food. In New York City food waste contributes to about one third of the total garbage that they have in their landfills, and dumps. When we throw away and waste food, we are also wasting the water that is in that food. The foods with the most water in them is fruits and vegetables. I think that we need to cut down on the food that we waste or we are going to be in serious trouble with famine and drought in the future.

I personally believe that the problem of food waste starts with the people, since whenever somebody buys groceries they get more food than what is necessary. Americans end up buying more than 300 billion pounds of food, when they only need around 5 to satisfy the hunger requirements of every single family in the nation. It becomes impossible to understand when people starve in the streets.

There are billions of people struggling every day to have enough to eat, and billions of tons of food being tossed in the garbage, food waste is gaining increasing awareness as a serious environmental and economic issue. Research shows that about 60 million metric tons of food is wasted a year in the United States, with an estimated value of $162 billion. About 32 million tons of it end up in landfills, at a cost of about $1.5 billion a year to local government this economic crisis is worldwide! My research estimates that a third of all the food produced in the world is never consumed, and the total cost of that food waste could be as high as $400 billion a year. The food discarded by retailers and consumers in the most developed countries would be more than enough to feed all of the world’s hungry people, but it is not just those countries that have problems with food waste, it is also an issue in African countries like South Africa. The problem is expected to grow worse as the world’s population increases, unless actions are taken to reduce the waste. Food waste is not only a social cost, but it contributes to growing environmental problems like global warming, experts say, with the production of food consuming vast quantities of water, fertilizer and land. The fuel that is burned to process, refrigerate and transport it also adds to the environmental cost. Most food waste is thrown away in landfills, where it decomposes and emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

There are billions of people struggling every day to have enough to eat, and billions of tons of food being tossed in the garbage, food waste is gaining increasing awareness as a serious environmental and economic issue. Research shows that about 60 million metric tons of food is wasted a year in the United States, with an estimated value of $162 billion. About 32 million tons of it end up in landfills, at a cost of about $1.5 billion a year to local government this economic crisis is worldwide! My research estimates that a third of all the food produced in the world is never consumed, and the total cost of that food waste could be as high as $400 billion a year. The food discarded by retailers and consumers in the most developed countries would be more than enough to feed all of the world’s hungry people, but it is not just those countries that have problems with food waste, it is also an issue in African countries like South Africa. The problem is expected to grow worse as the world’s population increases, unless actions are taken to reduce the waste. Food waste is not only a social cost, but it contributes to growing environmental problems like global warming, experts say, with the production of food consuming vast quantities of water, fertilizer and land. The fuel that is burned to process, refrigerate and transport it also adds to the environmental cost. Most food waste is thrown away in landfills, where it decomposes and emits methane, a potent

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food wastage, “food produced and not eaten,” emits enough greenhouse gasses (GHG) to be ranked third amongst global emitters (FAO 2013, 6). In New York City (NYC) it is estimated that businesses “produce more than 650,000 tons of food waste annually” (Turso 2017). This specific food waste is classified as food scrap, cooked food which is still edible, but no longer useful to the business due to a myriad of reasons. Whatever the reason may be for the company, this tonnage of food has the potential and possibility of being recovered for redistribution to food banks, soup kitchens, and other food rescue organizations. For example, two of the largest organizations in NYC, City Harvest and Food Bank NYC, will collect around 59 million and 24 million pounds in 2017 respectively, of unprocessed/non-perishable food. This is equivalent to about 42 thousand tons or 6.5 percent of annual food waste from scraps. Despite having warehouses, fleets of vehicles, and numerous volunteers, two of the largest organizations barely make an impact on the total amount of food rescued versus food wasted.