Food Waste is a PROBLEM…We Gotta Change

From blog.uvm.edu

According to USDA.gov, we Americans waste 133 billion pounds of food every single year.  In case seeing ‘133 billion’ isn’t impactful enough, let me type out the whole number…

133,000,000,000…that is a LOT of food.

Considering that our population was approximately 322 million as of July 2015, let’s do some math to see about how many pounds of food are wasted per person.

133,000,000,000 lbs of wasted food / 322,000,000 people => 413 lbs of wasted food per person per year

We waste on average 413 lbs of food every year.  That’s roughly 8 lbs of food per week for each person in your household.  We all know that Grandma and Granddad who grew up during the Depression wouldn’t accept this, but for some reason, we don’t seem to care as much these days.

If we order food at a restaurant and it’s not cooked to our liking, what do we do?  Send it back.  And the restaurant throws it away.

When I worked in fast food during my college years, if we had food left over at the end of the day, what did we do with it?  We threw most of it away.

Now granted, much of what we attempt to call food ain’t really worthy to be called food if it’s fried, in a package, and can survive a nuclear apocalypse.  But aside from that junk, we throw away a lot of real food.  It’s so much that according to the USDA, if we reduced the amount by just 15%, we could feed 25 million hungry Americans!

And to keep me from seeming like I have it all together with food waste, I’ll tell you right now that I DON’T.  I stand guilty as well.  So the main thing that I’m saying is that WE GOTTA CHANGE.

This isn’t my typical post, but it’s undoubtedly something that we in America really have to consider.  Because we are such big fans in this country of disease-causing convenience, we throw away food in a heartbeat, as if food is easy to come by, and as if there aren’t folks out there that actually die from hunger.

Do Your Part

Let’s you and I do our part.  If you have food in the fridge, eat it.  Don’t just throw it away because you’re tired of it.

If you have food on the counter that could eventually rot (apples, bananas, avocadoes), prep them in some kind of way to preserve them for later.

And if you don’t need it yet, don’t buy it yet (unless you know without a doubt that you will eat it).

Teach your kids to not waste their food.  If they’re too full to finish it, you should probably eat it.

Just some thoughts of mine.  What do you think about food waste?  What are you doing about food waste?