Food Waste

Americans waste a lot of food. So much, that it adds up to about 62 million tons every year. With such wastefulness, it’s time to get serious about a solution.

In an effort to eradicate all food wasted in its stores and distribution centers, Tesco says that it will work with 5,000 different charities in the UK in order to give all unsold food to those who need it most.
Credit: Philippe Wojazer/Reuters
Figures recently released by the company suggest that this new program could save 55,400 tonnes of food that were thrown away at its stores and distribution centers across the country in 2015.

As one of the richest nations in the industrialized word, the U.S. wastes an estimated 40% of all food. If we reduced that number by just 15% we could feed half of the nearly 50 million Americans, 15 million of them children that go hungry every single day. Landmark legislation was recently introduced to combat hunger and reduce food waste, but it needs help getting Congress’ attention.

Despite more than 17.5 million households in the United States either going hungry or underfed, our grocery stores throw away 26% of perfectly good produce every year. What’s worse, many people on food stamps or considered ‘food challenged’ don’t have access to healthful, organic produce. So why so much food waste?

Innovation and pragmatism are being deployed to tackle the problem of one third of global food production being wasted

In line with some US-based organizations created to give completely free food to the poor, France recently passed a law that bans supermarkets from throwing away unsold food, and instead behooves them to donate it to charity

Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, and other biotech bullies are still telling the world they are trying to feed us with their GM foods, but I think most of us are on to their shady tactics. I will venture that in order to feed a growing population, one thing we need to start doing is STOP wasting so much food.