Posted on 04/19/2018 5:18:36 AM PDT by BBell
Americans waste nearly 150,000 tons of food per day, amounting to about one pound (422 grams) per person, and fruits and vegetables are mostly what gets tossed, said a study Wednesday.
The amount of land used annually to grow food that ends up in the garbage in the United States is 30 million acres, or seven percent of total US cropland. Some 4.2 trillion gallons of irrigation water gets wasted, too, said the report in the journal PLOS ONE.
Fruits and vegetables made up 39 percent of total food waste, followed by dairy (17 percent), meat (14 percent) and grains (12 percent).
Items least likely to be thrown out included salty snacks, table oils, egg dishes, candy and soft drinks.
“Higher quality diets have greater amounts of fruits and vegetables, which are being wasted in greater quantities than other food,” said co-author Meredith Niles, an assistant professor at the University of Vermont.
(Excerpt) Read more at foodevolution.com.ph ...
Food is a renewable resource - don’t see this as a problem.
I would bet you that this is not true in NORTH KOREA or VENEZUELA
Looking at this in a positive way we are a rich nation. We are (still) free to buy and eat what we want and toss what we don’t want.
The only way this is going to change is if the government gets involved in the free market. Then I can gurantee you that no food will go to waste because there will not be enough for anyone (other than the elite).
Yeah, if only we'd redistribute the food equitably, everyone on the Earth would have enough to eat, right, ya busybody ****? Step one, mind your own business, step two, learn to live with food waste, and if you can't Step three, kill yourself, because it isn't going to change. North Korea, the illegal Pyongyang regime, is just the most notorious regime that deliberately starves the population under its control. Of the 200 or so nations on the Earth, at least half are despotates, a good many of which do the same.
The weight of 1 1/2 aircraft carriers.
Potatoes and onions: when they get old, make soup. When fish starts to stink, cook it extra long. Moldy cheese: just cut off the mold and the rest is fine. There are lots of things you don’t have to throw out.
Consequence of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Impossible to prevent without wasting more energy.
I have a friend who works as a subcontractor for Little Debbie. He always has 'expired labels' and there is nothing wrong with it. He gives away some and sells a lot, some to convenient marts. You can guess who runs these mini marts.
He told me the whole label expiration thing mostly just a ploy to keep the product moving, not so much for freshness.
It is unbelievable how much food is trashed at schools. Even before the 0bama lunches. And a lot of these kids are on free lunches.
That’s a shame about them not even being able to give rotisserie chickens to employees, which would help a family’s food budget.
Unfortunately, there are those who would game the system by holding back chickens for sale, and if anybody gets sick within the foreseeable future, create a liability issue that the chicken caused it.
And that’s why we can’t have nice things.
So what. We can do it. If the $h!thole countries want it, they can come and get it.
To be fair to walmart, they did implement a food recycling program. They separate it and put it in bins outside. I don't know who takes it.
I worked there when they started it. They had to threaten the employees and lock the dumpster up on the food side of the store to get the employees to do it. To be fair to the employees, by doing this walmart increased the workload but did not give extra time to do it.
A lot!! Customers are a large part of the problem.
“I have a friend who works for Tasty-Kake. I saw him in the grocery store and he was pulling boxes off the shelves.”
I had a fight with the someone at our local HEB. I love when they put out the rotisserie turkey breasts. I picked one up and the person who handles the chicken and turkey grabbed it from me. Says to me, “expired, cannot sell it to you.” It wasn’t 10 minutes past expiration.
I think they should change the labeling from “Sell by” to “Eat by.”
BTW, food conservation is one of the things, amongst others, that left and right wingers have in common.
Obama forced taxpayers to pay for free lunches at schools, but the students threw it away.
Trump Administration Rolls Back Michelle Obama’s Healthy School Lunch Push
May 1, 20176:54 PM ET
“This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting the final regulations for school meals,” Perdue said in a statement. “If kids aren’t eating the food, and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren’t getting any nutrition — thus undermining the intent of the program.”
Check the hygiene laws within the USA. My husband worked in the restaurant industry for 22 years and he once was forced to throw out two cooked Thanksgiving turkeys because they were on a table for 5 minutes prior to a health department unannounced visit. The chef burst into tears. Check out idiot Bloomberg goosing up the nutty hygiene laws - in which even soup kitchens couldn’t hand out leftovers to the homeless.
I’ve seen documentaries that show where pig farmers buy unused food from restaurants, sterilize it, and feed it to their hogs. It’s a win-win for everyone.
A few years ago, the government of Egypt decided to destroy all of the pig farms in the country. IIRC, it was to try to avoid having avian influenza adapt to humans. Avian influenza is a big problem in that part of the world. Anyway, once the pigs were destroyed, Egypt had a huge problem with garbage, which causes foul smells and breeds massive quantities of flies.
And Stalin did that one for kicks.
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