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Our food system churns out enough to provide every man, woman, and child with 3,800 calories a day. But only 2,550 of those calories get eaten. With 70 percent of adults and 35 percent of children overweight or obese, we’d be better off eating even less. Even so, those 1,250 wasted calories lead to greenhouse gas emissions, thrown-away resources, and higher prices. What can we do?
We waste an incredible amount of food,” says Edward Spang, assistant professor of food science and technology at the University of California, Davis.
It’s not just the slimy lettuce, moldy leftovers, or green cheese in your fridge.
“It starts at the farm or a livestock facility, where food might spoil or be damaged by weather or pests,” says Spang. “Then a forklift could damage a pallet of food or the refrigeration on a truck could cut out and cause spoilage.”
Estimates that include those losses reach 1,400 calories a day per person.1,2
The lion’s share of waste happens after food leaves the farm.
“Businesses that serve or sell food are responsible for 40 percent of food waste in the United States,” says Jennifer Molidor of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has graded supermarket chains on how well they track and report food waste.
Stores may toss holiday foods that never sold or fruits and vegetables with less-than-perfect color, shape, or size.
“We need revised cosmetic standards across all stores,” says Molidor.
To create a look of abundance, stores may keep in-store delis and bakeries looking well-stocked right up until closing. Then some of that food gets dumped.
“Stores can also eliminate promotions like buy-one-get-one schemes for perishables,” says Molidor. Odds are, some will end up in your trash.
Restaurants are also to blame. What happens when Red Robin sells “Bottomless Steak Fries” or TGI Fridays sells “2 apps+2 entrées+2 desserts” for $20? It’s either excess waist...or excess waste.
While some food waste is inevitable, throwing away so much has consequences that you may not think about:
- Higher prices. “Wasting food pushes up the price of food and means that it’s not accessible to people who could use it,” says Brian Roe, professor of agricultural, environmental, and development economics at Ohio State University.
- Wasted water and land. “Growing food is resource intensive,” notes Spang. Wasted food uses 21 percent of U.S. agricultural water and enough cropland to cover New Mexico, says the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.3
- Greenhouse gasses. Food waste creates as much greenhouse gas as 37 million passenger vehicles, estimates the NRDC.3 “About 75 percent of wasted food in the U.S. ends up in a landfill,” says Roe. When food scraps in landfills decompose, they create methane, a greenhouse gas that is roughly 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
What’s the answer? We can all do more. But some steps are out of our hands.
“The government’s lack of specific actions lets the biggest food-waste offenders, especially grocery stores, off the hook,” says Molidor.
Some progress is being made.
“In California, we have a law focused on reducing methane emissions,” says Spang. “One of its targets is to cut food and other organic material going to landfills by 75 percent by 2025.”
That has led some communities to charge “pay-as-you-throw” fees to curb waste that will end up in a landfill.
“The more garbage you throw out, the more you have to pay,” notes Roe.
Thanks, in part, to pay-as-you-throw fees, South Korea now recycles 95 percent of its food waste.
And in San Francisco, where every household and restaurant must use a composting bin, the city has diverted more than two million tons of compostables from landfills.
The feds could also do more. In November, when romaine lettuce was linked to an outbreak of foodborne illness, the FDA couldn’t trace the source, so enormous amounts of lettuce got tossed, no matter where it was grown.
“We have the tools needed to improve traceability,” says Spang. “They just haven’t been widely adopted.”
1ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/43833/43680_eib121.pdf.
2PLoS One 4: e7940, 2009.
3nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-2017-report.pdf.
Photos: panaramka/stock.adobe.com (top), Kaamilah Mitchell/CSPI.