Experts: Up to half of world's food goes to waste

[MindMover]

Source: CBS

(CBS News) - Experts gathering this week at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago said an estimated 30 to 50 percent of the food produced globally goes to waste.
Reuters reports that on average, Americans throw away about 33 pounds of food each month which adds up to $396 in lost groceries a year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Food production also hurts the environment by taking the world's water supply, emitting greenhouse gases and consumes a large amount of energy and chemicals.

As the world's population rises so too does demand for food and pressure on farmers. By 2050, experts estimate the population will grow from an estimated 7 to 9 billion people.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-57398342-503543/experts-up-to-half-of-worlds-food-goes-to-waste/?

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And how many in the world go hungry every night....hmmm

[kestrel91316]

1. I buy a lot less food than I did 20 years ago, and make a point of not letting

a single morsel go to waste. Sometimes that means eating culinary failures.

Waste not, want not.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. Disgusting!

[sikorsky]

3. Hundreds of TONS of food in the USA are tossed into landfills every day because of insane rules

that prevent restaurants and grocery stores from giving it away to hungry homeless people. Those regulations, while made for ostensibly good reasons, are simply idiotic, wasteful and stupid.
Maybe the bureaucrats who make up those stupid fucking rules should ask the hungry people if they want some of it. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR

[Gormy Cuss]

7. Yes, that's where much of the U.S. waste comes from --commercial users, not people at home.

A lot of the "waste" from supermarkets gets recycled these days as donations to food banks and kitchens and some restaurant and catering overage gets passed on the same way but all of the above could do more to minimize waste if a few rules were revised.

[Control-Z]

8. You're so right, sikorsky.

Our grocery stores are required by law to throw away any food that will not be sold the next day in the store. It is against the law to give the food away to a soup kitchen or to the homeless and hungry. And it is against the law for anyone to take that food out of the dumpsters.

Perfectly good produce with possibly bruised skin or just overstocked and not sold that day is wasted. It's sickening. And it is because of lawsuits that were filed by recipients of the free food (when it was legal) who got sick and blamed it on bad food.

The groceries stores are forced to protect themselves. And the hungry are still hungry.

[fasttense]

9. Are you sure that laws against giving away bruised or day old food

came from law suits filed by those receiving the free food?

It's just too convenient for the mass producers and capitalists. Throwing away the bruised and day old food at the grocery store helps sell more food, which is the capitalist mantra. If they gave this food away, where would be the incentive to buy it?

Capitalism always, always leads to overproduction when the working class is underpaid. Just look around you. There is food that no one buys. There are perfectly good houses no one lives in, there are cars no one drives. Yet there are millions of Americans who go hungry, there are millions who suffer homelessness, there are millions who need transportation. This is what happens in a capitalist society when the working class are underpaid and can not buy up the overproduction.

This is just another symptom of a broken economic system.

[former9thward]

15. There is a federal law which exempts food donation from suits.

The Act further states that, absent gross negligence or intentional misconduct, persons, gleaners, and nonprofit organizations shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability arising from the nature, age, packaging, or condition of apparently wholesome food or apparently fit grocery products received as donations.

http://www.usda.gov/news/pubs/gleaning/seven.htm

[Control-Z]

17. I'm not sure how the law was applied exactly -

If it was the state, county, city or the grocery store chain itself calling the shots. It was the store manager who gave me the information at the time. The law you cite may have come after or somehow not applied. All I know is what I was told when I approached them about it.

[TalkingDog]

10. Hence Freegans and Dumpster Divers (I count myself among them)

If I get more than I can use, I give it to other people. If it is damaged, I make dog food.

[izquierdista]

4. Places where they don't throw away food

http://www.goodfriendsusa.blogspot.com/2012/03/north-korea-today-no-439-january-25.html

[Taverner]

5. But nooooo we can't use that to feed the poor...that would be uncapitalist....

FUCK CAPITALISM!!!!

AND FUCK IT'S DEFENDERS!!!!

[indivisibleman]

6. we used to waste a lot

more food than we do now. We have worked for years to develop a system that uses everything we buy and helps us to only buy what we can eat before it spoils. Thus we leave the spoilage to the grocer who hopefully has a good system as well.
Here is what we have found works for us:
We stop at the grocery every day or every other day and buy only what we need or something that is on sale and good for the freezer. We drive by the store every day anyway so there are no extra miles spent going there.
We rarely save anything and make only what we can eat with perhaps a take to work lunch for the next day. This takes a lot of work. We cut a lot of recipes in half. We threw out almost all our tupperware. Tupperware is storage for spoiled or ruined dishes as far as we are concerned.
When we go out to eat we order only what we can eat or take hope some of the meal for lunch. Much like what we do at home.
We figure we waste less than 10% of everything we buy. Never measured it but now I think I will.
Peace folks. Hope this gives someone some ideas.

[peace13]

11. Thanks for this! n/t

[Retrograde]

13. Learning to buy less is the first step

And avoiding buying extras on sale just because they're on sale ("Hmmm, spinach is $1.50 a bunch but 2 bunches for $2, but can I really use 2 before the second one goes bad?&quot , which I think is the root cause of a lot of the thrown-out food.

It hurts to throw away food. I recently had to dispose of a whole freezer (the kind that comes with the refrigerator, not the stand-alone kind) when it broke when we were out of town. The contents had been sitting in an unheated box for at least four days, and the smell was ferocious. I still make large batches of some items with the intent of freezing portions, but I'm getting more diligent about checking the freezer first.

Now, another big culprit is fast-food and chain restaurants: the first discard items after an hour or so, and the latter tend to serve such large portions that half a meal may be thrown away.

[indivisibleman]

18. good points

In my efforts to not be wasteful in my hope I hope to gradually instill these ideas in others and work toward changing how groceries and restaurants do business. Waste affects everyone's bottom line and it also troubles me when we have so many people not getting enough food to eat in a healthy fashion.

[lovuian]

12. it is true

food equation needs to be improved and take away waste

[Quiet_Dem_Mom]

14. Did you see "The Big Waste" on the Food Network?

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food-network-specials/the-big-waste/index.html

A few of the TV chefs are given the task of cooking a banquet meal for a couple hundred people...using only the discards from local restaurants, orchards, fisheries, etc. The chefs were astounded at the perfectly edible food that was discarded on a daily basis at these locations. Just imagine that waste multiplied by all the restaurants, farms, orchards and fisheries, etc. in the country.

I don't know if they plan on rerunning the show, but there are a few video clips at the link above. It was a real eye-opener for us.

[Poll_Blind]

16. That is astounding. nt

PB