Preserving Food In America

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.

Food Waste is a major issue in the United States. It takes up much needed room in landfills, it is a financial burden, and it contributes to the rise in hunger.

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.

With the seemingly unstoppable growth of the world’s population and a projected global population of nine billion by 2050, the matter of whether or not there will be enough food to support the world’s populace is brought into question (Parfitt, et al., 2010). However, amid the concern for an adequate food supply, there is an immense amount of food waste produced by the world, including the United States. In fact, “according to the Natural Resources Defense Council as much as 40 percent of all food produced in the United States never gets eaten and typically ends up in the landfills or goes unharvested in the field “(King, 2015).

While everyone may love to go out and enjoy a fine meal with friends and family, most will never stop to think the process of how the food came about, or the production thereof. John Oliver’s piece on “Food Waste” outlines all the problems of food waste and how they can impact society, animals, nature, and even the farmers who harvest the produce. America and its businesses should try to decrease the amount of food being wasted. By doing so, not only are we a contributing factor to help reduce waste, save time and money, but we are also aiding the less-fortunate in a society, while still saving natural resources and the planet as a whole.

However, I feel like this topic needs to be address by the federal government and be discussed within our communities, since people are clueless about the topic and they need to be aware of the situation. Also, I feel like the government need to create a law for big food corporation to find ways to lower amount of food wastage during production, since that is when food is also wasted, encourage people to re-use food – feeding people on need, feed livestock – food unfit for humans, or recycle food – compost food

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.

Before 1830, food preservation used time-tested methods: salting, spicing, smoking, pickling and drying. There was little use for refrigeration since the foods it primarily preserved — fresh meat, fish, milk, fruits, and vegetables — did not play as important a role in the North American diet as they do today. In fact, the diet consisted mainly of bread and salted meats.

Looking at the Impacts of Food Waste, In general by wasting food that’s mean we are wasting our money but in different way. . At the same time it is impacting us financially it’s also playing a huge role in the problems we see happening to our environment. The US Environment Protection Agency said, “Generating food waste has significant economic as well as environmental consequences. Whether you’re an individual, family, or business, chances are a considerable portion of your budget goes towards buying food — either for you, your family, or your customers. And since we now throw away more food than anything else, that means we are throwing away a lot of our money.” (“Basics,” par. 2) They went on to say that wasting food does more than impact our economy; it also impacts our environmental severely. We need to look at other countries and see what they’re doing with their food waste mistakes and do them same in our country the

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

Lloyd Hall was born ( June 20, 1894) in Elgin,IL . Lloyd died on ( January 2, 1971) in Pasadena,CA . Lloyd Hall attend to University of Chicago, Northwestern University, earning a B.S and a Master’s degree at the University of Chicago.Lloyd was an African American chemist , who contributed to the science food preservation. By the end of his career, Hall amassed 59 United States patents, and a number of his inventions were also patented in other countries. At Northwestern, Hall met Carroll L. Griffith, who was with his father, Enoch L. Griffith, founded Griffith laboratories. The Griffith later hired Hall as their chief chemist. Lloyd invented number of ways to be better preserve food. Many foods are used today were pioneered by Dr.Hall’s method.

When reading the article “This Apple Could Have Been Saved” by Kristen Lewis and Adee Braun it makes you realize just how much America and all of the people living here have been taught so many bad habits with conserving food. People in America have been taught by not only their families but by society that it is okay to waste food. These habits have affected so many things on earth including pollution and starvation. One example from the article is the picture on page 15 of a landfill covered in half eaten food and trash that could have been composted,donated, or even given to animals. All of these problems could be reduced or even ended if people just listened to the people around the world pushing and even trying to help reduce the amount

“Poor, darling fellow – he died of food. He was killed by the dinner table” (Vreeland). It was December 7th, 1941 and Japanese fleets and airplanes had attacked and bombed the American military and nautical base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On this day, America entered World War II, and began its own four-year fight against the Axis of Powers, as well as a war for food, United State troops were sent off to battle with their fellow man, as well as battling their hunger. The focus of food during World War II food does not diminish the acts done by both sides of the war, but, it does bring a new aspect of World War II that is completely overlooked, and aspect is that: food preservation, packaging and propaganda methods in World War II negatively

In America, we are constantly surrounded by abundance. Food is a prevalent waste item in the United States. Most people do not think about the resources it took to produce, transport, and prepare the food they throw away. Our food waste is not actually just trash; it is the key to human survival. Ordinary consumers can change the future with one small action: to stop wasting food. Actions at the individual level can decrease food waste and feed those in need. Twenty five percent of purchased food is thrown away. (TED) Often this is because food has spoiled, but it can be for other reasons such as oversupply, misread labels, or individual consumer shopping and eating habits. http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3347e/i3347e.pdf