USDA app aims to stop Americans from wasting 36 lbs. food a month

Washington Examiner ^ | April 22, 2015 | 9:23 PM | Paul Bedard

[Olog-hai]

The Agriculture Department has determined that 36 pounds of food per person is wasted every month, about 21 percent of the available food in the United States. And one big reason: those expiration dates are wrong or overly cautious.

The solution: Hold your nose and just eat it. Even if it is 18 months past the expiration date.

It sounds yucky, but officials think they’ve got the trick to get moms to feed expired but safe food to kids and adults alike—they’ve even got an app. It’s called FoodKeeper and it is supposed to have a more accurate calculation of food expiration dates, even for baby food and eggs. …

[dfwgator]

The five-second rule is about to become the 5-week rule.

[knarf]

A lot of Christian outreach lunch servers will be seriously curtailed

[ansel12]

It is about time that they tried to educate the idiots.

Many people seem totally clueless about food, and they just throw it out unopened and unused.

[BitWielder1]

What is the cost, economic and humanitarian, of people getting sick or dying from eating bad food?
Seems like penny wise and dollar foolish to me.
Outright dangerous actually. Not worth it.
We are not that poor. Not yet anyway.

[Farmer Dean]

The sad fact is,a lot of people are too stupid to manage the contents of their refrigerators.

[C19fan]

Do you actually believe people waste 36 pounds of food a month? According to the Dept AG Americans eat 164 lbs of food a month. So someone is claiming Americans are wasting 20% of their food in a day of refrigeration and microwaves?

[novemberslady]

This will work out well for the supermarket nearby that’s constantly selling things past the dates.

[rigelkentaurus]

stupid government - aren’t they the ones that require expiration dates on everything in the first place?

[cripplecreek]

Useless for me.

I’m a conservative and don’t waste much of anything.

[Farmer Dean]

The customers are too dumb to check the date on the package.Or they’re too busy talking on their Obamaphones.

[KarlInOhio]

Hold your nose and just eat it. Even if it is 18 months past the expiration date.

That chicken still has a couple of good months left on it. I'll pull it back out of the trash and put it into the refrigerator.

[BuffaloJack]

It is smarter to toss foods that are questionable than to risk a repeat of the Ohio church dinner Botulism disaster from a few days ago.

[novemberslady]

Nope the store has a lot of old stock to get rid of.
Of course they have been losing shoppers...

[MrB]

More food is wasted because the wasters didn’t pay for it in the first place.

[ansel12]

I just used a can of peas yesterday with a “best by” date of February 2009. and the tomato sauce that I used was ‘best by’ 2012, and that is because I think that I am out of my ‘best by’ 2008 tomato sauce.

[Leaning Right]

It is smarter to toss foods that are questionable than to risk a repeat of the Ohio church dinner Botulism disaster from a few days ago.

Yep. food poisoning is a nasty, nasty thing. When in doubt, throw it out.

[kiryandil]

It is smarter to toss foods that are questionable than to risk a repeat of the Ohio church dinner Botulism disaster from a few days ago.

Let's wait to find out what that was about.

I suspect "potatoes under tin foil"

Last night, I bought 7 pounds of "outdated" cheese for 8 bucks.

LOL! Meanwhile, people pay top dollar for "aged cheddar"...

[Old Sarge]

I have known for a LONG time that a lot of the expiration dates are bogus.

It simply forces the consumer to re-buy food that is actually still good.

My daughters went on an expiration-pitching orgy a few months ago - and a lot of our stash vanished overnight. It wasn’t a game-ender, but it hurt the effort...

[BookmanTheJanitor]

Thank goodness the government is here to teach us about waste (rolling eyes).