In One Year a Billion Tons of Food Got Wasted (bloomberg.com) 127
There is something that the average person can do to slow down climate change, and it can be accomplished without leaving the house. Don't waste food. From a report: Some 931 million tons of it went to waste in 2019, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Individual households were responsible for more than half of that, with the rest coming from retailers and the food service industry. New estimates show that about 17% of food available to consumers worldwide that year ended up being wasted. The matter is even more urgent when considered alongside another UN analysis that tracks the problem further up the supply chain, and shows 14% of food production is lost before it reaches stores. Waste is happening at every point, from the field to the dinner table.
Food waste and loss are responsible for as much as 10% of global emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If it were a country, this discard would rank third in the ranking of the world's sources of greenhouse gases, after China and the U.S. Among the most effective climate solutions, non-profit Project Drawdown ranks cutting food waste ahead of moving to electric cars and switching to plant-based diets. Thursday's UNEP report suggests the amount of food wasted by consumers could be about double the previous estimate. The analysis conducted by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization in 2011 relied on data from fewer countries.
Food waste and loss are responsible for as much as 10% of global emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If it were a country, this discard would rank third in the ranking of the world's sources of greenhouse gases, after China and the U.S. Among the most effective climate solutions, non-profit Project Drawdown ranks cutting food waste ahead of moving to electric cars and switching to plant-based diets. Thursday's UNEP report suggests the amount of food wasted by consumers could be about double the previous estimate. The analysis conducted by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization in 2011 relied on data from fewer countries.
Don't waste food? (Score:1)
Most Americans look like they eat every scrap of it.
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It's a mystery exactly why Americans are chubby. Theories include:
A. Car culture means we exercise less than those who walk to/from public transportation or use bicycles
B. Our restaurants serve too big of portions
C. We have a poor diet, per too much oil, red meat, and starch.
D. Pollution in our food screws up our bodies
E. Our competitive culture causes weight-gaining stress
F. Many or all of the above.
As far as food waste, meal management takes effort and time in terms of tracking what's left over, how to co
Re: Don't waste food? (Score:5, Informative)
It's a mystery exactly why Americans are chubby.
It's not a mystery at all. Americans enjoy the highest standard of living the human race has ever seen. Plenty of food, no need to perform hard physical labor and plenty of leisure time.
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You wouldn't know it based on all the whining that goes on in America right now about how "hard" life has somehow become over the last few years.
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What you have there is a hypothesis, not a tested answer.
Re: Don't waste food? (Score:2)
This if course is why lab animals whose caloric intake and composition of food has largely remained unchanged outside of studies specifically studying dietary changes have grown more obese over the past 30 years. It's because Americans have a high standard of living.
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Two words: Junk food.
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There's no direct evidence eating junk-food is the primary cause, although it does cause some weight gain.
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High carb diet can be healthy. High fat diet can be healthy. Combine the two, eating large amounts of carbs and fats along with excessive sugar and you're asking for trouble.
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That does not explain the difference between the USA and other countries.
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"The government" said that?
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https://www.cato.org/policy-an... [cato.org]
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No. This had little to do with science, and much to do with idiots in Congress.... https://academic.oup.com/jhmas... [oup.com]
In 1968, the Senate appointed George McGovern to chair a Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs mandated to look into the problem of hunger in America. This committee, which met until 1977, was instrumental in the federal government's promotion of low-fat diets. During the nine years of hearings, the committee's focus shifted from its initial emphasis on hunger and the poor to chronic
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I didn't offer a solution, only pointed out that it was a decision made by Congress, and that it wasn't scientifically backed as you had stated. It could have been influence, or ignorance...I'm not going to do the research because it just doesn't matter at this point.
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I think it has to be A and maybe B. C,D,E are certainly true of other countries. Even B is true in some countries that have much less of a problem, France for instance.
Is composting "wasting food"? (Score:1)
Yeah, sometimes I get food and never eat it. I might buy a head of romaine lettuce or something because I wanted a salad right then and there, but then not eat the rest of it and it wilts. But my city has a composting program (which is so much more successful than our recycling program), so that head of wilted lettuce ends up there, being turned into food for other heads of lettuces that I will buy on impulse but never end up finishing.
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restaurants and on other corps. (Score:1)
Re: restaurants and on other corps. (Score:2)
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When we lived in Phoenix we had a lemon tree. Every February we picked a ton of softball-size, sweet lemons, juiced them, and made ice cubes out of the concentrate. That gave us lemonade and lemon bars for the entire year.
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"Don't waste food" (Score:3, Insightful)
Easier said than done.
How often can you really get "only what you need" when planning for food? I only need 4 burger buns for dinner, but all the packages have 6+; that frozen package of chicken fingers - smallest is a 6lbs box, way too much to eat in 1 sitting, and don't want to eat that for dinner each night for the entire week (so goes forgotten); many, many other examples I could give.
But consumers aren't the only ones at fault - I often see packages of stuff in groceries that is obviously going to go unsold (and eventually thrown out), because they either produce or just stock way too much (breads are one example).
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Why are you throwing out frozen food? Is your freezer broken?
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Very very occasionally. I look at the food wastage numbers here in the UK and frankly some people must be wasting a *LOT* more than the average, because the amount of food I have to put in the bin is very very small and 99% of it is stuff that has gone off well before its date. I buy a bag of oranges and find when I get home that one is bad type thing.
I figure less than 20USD per year is my typical food wastage.
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My wife and I would be the same as you, I'd think. As I walk the dogs around the neighborhood I'm always amazed by the number of homes with an overflowing 95 gallon trash bin *and* a recycle bin just as full. It's one thing if someone has had a party and there are a lot of disposable cups and stuff to get rid of, but it's the same people week after week. We never fill a 13 gallon trash bag between the two of us in a week.
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Yeah my wife and I will throw away a few dead ends of veggies in a week, that's about it. I don't understand the people who are throwing away 20% or more of what they buy.
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How many people have experienced any harm by eating food that had expiration dates months in the past? I'd be surprised if the number rises into triple digits worldwide (medicines on the other hand...) We've eaten noodles that we found in the back of the pantry that had expired nine years before (had fallen behind a sliding drawer), cans and bottles of food that had expired years before (our pantry is too large if you're not paying attention to rotating stock), and meat that had been frozen for years. Un
Re:"Don't waste food" (Score:5, Informative)
In the UK there are basically two dates. A "Use By" date and a "Best Before" date. "Use By" dates are about food safety and it is not a good idea to exceed them. "Best Before" dates mean just that the food is best before that date but is safe to eat after that date, just the taste, texture or colour might be not be so good, but it won't kill you.
Unfortunately there are large numbers of people who can't distinguish between the two because they have the reading comprehension of an gnat.
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Use your nose, that's what it evolved for.
On that note, women, if you're living with a guy and you find a food article your nose finds offensive, pass it by him. I regularly find food my wife won't eat *well* within my tolerances for taste and health.
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This varies by the type of food and even the place where you buy it. I've had milk that went bad (by smell) the day it "expired" multiple times from one food chain, while from others it's usually still drinkable for a few days after. For some foods, the expiration is more of a legal ass coverage for the manufacturer...
https://www.delish.com/food-ne... [delish.com]
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Look at what's in your freezer every week, not every 6 months. Poke around in your fridge before going shopping. Same with pantry shelves.
Problem solved.
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Plan your meals around your stocks, not your stocks around your desired meals.
Re:"Don't waste food" (Score:5, Insightful)
I only need 4 burger buns for dinner, but all the packages have 6+;
Let's see ... use the extra 2 (or whatever) tomorrow? You do realize that "burger buns" aren't limited to only being used for hamburgers, right?
that frozen package of chicken fingers - smallest is a 6lbs box, way too much to eat in 1 sitting, and don't want to eat that for dinner each night for the entire week (so goes forgotten)
"Smallest is a 6lbs box???" First off, if you insist on buying food for one meal at a time, you probably shouldn't be shopping at Costco.
Those frozen chicken things will last months in the freezer without getting any worse than they were to start with. Have them once a week if that's your thing, and they won't go to waste.
There are some things where it can be hard to use what you can buy, but those examples are terrible.
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Granted the examples weren't probably the best (and I was guessing with some - I'm terrible with estimating weights); my main point is that it's not always easy to get just the amount you need vs. being stuck with the extra you won't necessarily need right away (and eventually forget/pile up/expire) - but my point about grocery stores still applies.
What I've tried to start doing is just getting only what I need when possible - for (a better) example, getting only loose burger buns instead of a package, as
correction (Score:2)
(i.e. I save $1 by not wasting it on the extra 4 I use)
'on the extra 4 I don't use'
Re:"Don't waste food" (Score:5, Insightful)
If you live alone, I do understand it is more difficult but still not one of the most challenging tasks you'll come across during the week. I lived on my own for about 5 years. I'd grill 4 chicken breasts at a time. One for dinner, one maybe the next day for lunch. The other two I'd turn into something else, maybe chop up on a salad or add some cheese and a tortilla wrap for a quesadilla like option. I got quite creative in the kitchen and I always had a good feeling when I would create something that was actually quite good.
TL;DR - Get creative with the extra perishable foods. I've yet to come across a food item that has only one use.
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Learn to cook well and broadly. My wife would find the food that needed eating and make a pretty incredible and diverse meal from it.
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"that frozen package of chicken fingers - smallest is a 6lbs box,..."
Sorry, you went off Insightful right there. Google chicken fingers....Perdue sells 12 oz. packs. Tyson sells 24 oz. packs. Bell and Evens sells 12 oz. packs. Applegate comes in 8 oz.
Oh, and you can safely leave whatever you don't eat tonight in the freezer for at least a couple of weeks.
The new fad that's sweeping the nation! (Score:1)
No one wants to waste food. But I'm not about to force-feed myself a quart of old milk, an over-ripe orange, a hotdog bun, and half of a PBJ sandwich that the kids didn't want just so it isn't 'wasted.' That would just be gross and I would get fat(ter).
Realistically what am I supposed to do as a consumer? I already work hard at not buying something if I'm don't think I'm going to eat it. But, humans, in general, are bad at predicting the future and it is usually impossible just to order a re
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Look at the pond in Florida that could destroy a town. While this pond if from mining, many of these ponds are full of animal waste. They became a thing because animal excrement is no longer used a fertilizer, it is now a waste product we need to dispose of. Which leads to the pond in Florida that is full of the waste from artificial fertilizer.
Ideally there would be no food waste at the household level. All organic product would composted, either by the house, community, or city. It woul
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Composting adds CO2 to atmosphere. It is only a thing because of leftover innumeracy from the 1970s of landfill space shortage.
Bury it, along with yard waste, in non-biodegrading landfills, to take at least some of the pressure off inevitable carbon sequestration plans.
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If it gets ate by anything, including me, it ends up as CO2, which is what happens if it goes in my compost heap.
But compost improves the soil for the next crop, land filling would remove those nutrients from circulation for good, or at least until the landfill ruptures.
Re: The new fad that's sweeping the nation! (Score:2)
Can't tell if you're joking, but in case not, it needs to be pointed out that that looking at a compost pile in isolation is the wrong way.
Yes, a landfil is pretty much the end destination of whatever goes into it, excepting the methane, ammonia and whatnot coming off of it.
A compost pile on the other hand should simply be a station in an ongoing recycling loop of nutrient-rich raw materials. My compost pile, for instance, takes yard wastes and kitchen waste and so saves fuel (carbon) by removing the need
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Re:The new fad that's sweeping the nation! (Score:4, Insightful)
> Realistically what am I supposed to do as a consumer?
Well, first thing is to ignore anything that advertises something YOU can do to reduce your carbon footprint. Unless you do ludicrous stuff like "private jet to location A for a week, then back to location B for a weekend, then back to location A", absolutely nothing you do individually will make a lick of difference. If you are looking to be part of a group action, one that adds complexity to your daily life won't help either, as you will either not do it, or have been better off taking that time and offsetting carbon some other way. Finding ways to buy locally can help. Finding ways to ban a teenager from rolling coal will not. Finding ways to transport electricity efficiently by upgrading from WWII era infrastructure will help, gas taxes will not.
The second thing is to never take ANYONE's advice about food, except as it improves the following three things:
1- How healthy the food will make you.
2- How happy the food will make you.
3- How much money the food will cost you.
These are the only three things that matter. Almost no one eats "correctly", whatever that means. Everyone above the poverty level is going to be impacted by (1) or (3), everyone below it will be forced to deal with all three at once. Eat expired food if you have to save money. Don't eat it so that you produce less carbon. If it's the same cost to buy three heads of lettuce as it is to buy two, and you eat between 1.5 and 2.2 before they go bad, buy the three and never feel bad pitching the rest. Your food affects you. It doesn't affect the world. If the world chokes on CO2, it will be the fault of governments, corporations, and the media, and never people. Never you. Never. It's all lies, never feel an ounce of guilt for eating or driving or whatever. Unless you are some jet setting millionaire, your personal stuff doesn't affect anything, but switching from fresh food to preserved food to save an ounce of carbon could affect you negatively or something, certainly thinking about it will create stress.
Generally ignore all advice in articles like this.
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Why? Because we drive more miles per capita than everyone else.
https://internationalcompariso... [internatio...risons.org]
Clean your plate (Score:2)
There are children starving in China.
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And Untrue!
No one starves in Taiwan.
No one starves in Hong Kong
People Do starve in Mainland China but only the ones that their Federal Government wants to starve.
As a personal note, my mother would say that to me. One day, I responded, "But they're our enemies, right? Don't we want them to starve?". After that response, she never said that again.
number is suspect (Score:2)
a billion tons means 160 kg/person/year. That's 430 grams/day, or an entire dinner for one. That's so far outside my experience I have a hard time believing it. 5% of that is closer to the amount I throw away. Now I have it easy: I live alone so I can cook for one and never have to guess how much I have to prepare. I have a good fridge so rarely have food spoil. Are people really that profligate with their food?
Re:number is suspect (Score:5, Informative)
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Even beyond that, lots of restaurants weren't selling well. Some restaurants became grocery stores during the pandemic and sold commercially packed meats, fruits, and vegetables. They mostly only did it to prevent their own waste - I don't think they continued to order more. Wholesalers did make some deals with grocery stores, but it was mostly for things that were in shortage in grocery stores rather than what they had in overstock.
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perfectly safe but ‘past expiration date’ product is tossed (those numbers are just manufacturer guesses)
I have accustomed to feed mostly on such from the sale corners, where 50% and 70% discounts do apply (European country). Excellent products are to be found there - from genuine first rate Camembert to the whole duck, awaiting now to be grilled over the weekend, at less than third of the original price. Having very basic experience to handle food, mostly in near-freezing zone of the fridge, allows prolonging perfect use, way beyond the stated dates, which are - correct - preventive guesses. It gets slightly
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Its not so much individuals, as it is restaurants and grocery stores where ‘ugly’ produce is tossed, damaged (but still sealed) product is tossed,
You missed a big one - farmers. Farmers contract out to provide 10 tons of tomatoes, so they shoot for 12 tons just to be sure they can fulfill their order. Then they have a good year and end up with 15 tons, and have to figure out how to get rid of 3 tons. But if everyone has the same issue, sometimes the answer is to just plow it back into the field as fertilizer.
Or maybe they get 12 tons but 2 tons have blemishes or don't meet the agreed upon quality standards. Those veg might not be worth trying to do a
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I live in farm country and I know of no one who contracts out for specific quantities of produce, especially low numbers like you used. Have you any *idea* of how many tons of tomatoes can be grown on just ten acres?
They grow the produce and then sell to aggregators.
hahaha (Score:1)
Probably a billion people got wasted too.
And yet... (Score:2)
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Informative)
And on the flip side of the coin... (Score:2)
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That's actually a very interesting line of inquiry if you have the time. This is a good place to start:
https://www.gatesfoundation.or... [gatesfoundation.org]
Who has that lousy job? (Score:3)
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Yeah, sure (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, this is serious, but they miss a very crucial component.
Where food is "plenty" and where it is "needed" are separated by huge distances, sometimes thousands of miles away. Of course there are local anomalies. Here in Bay Area, we have homeless, we also have restaurants that have to dump food due to liability. However at the end of the day we don't actually have *real* hunger.
On the other hand, in a war ravaged place like Yemen, children are literally dying of hunger. The situation is dire, and even if we wanted to we cannot send any food over there. ahem.. Saudis... ahem..
I too would prefer we did not waste food. That costs money, time, and of course the environment. However I would prefer to have excess food than too little. And that comes with making it cheap. So cheap that farmers don't bother to pick up fruit falling onto the ground.
And fixing food issues at distant lands comes first from prosperity and ending the stupid laws. No amount of wishful thinking will make the situation in Yemen better as long as they are under a blockade and constant barrage of missiles.
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And that comes with making it cheap. So cheap that farmers don't bother to pick up fruit falling onto the ground.
In many areas (CA included) it's not legal to sell fruit once it's touched the ground. This farmer is happy to eat that fruit all year long.
We would also happily sell the scarred fruit and uglier fruit but it doesn't sell and has to be used in commercial products often times at a financial loss. By the time the fruit is graded it's been picked, washed & transported to a packing facility and they decide what happens to it not the grower. Farmers are paid losing money on this share of the crop and it's
It is not wasted - it is sequestrated (Score:5, Funny)
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Not really, it just generates methane very slowly over a period of decades.
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Actually... (Score:1)
System is working as designed (Score:5, Interesting)
Excess supply means that in a normal year, we have more food than we can actually eat. And the challenge has been to figure out what to do with all this excess food. Some of it gets sent overseas as foreign aid. Some of it gets sold as cattle feed to make steaks cheaper. Some of it gets converted into high fructose corn syrup, to reduce our dependence on imported cane sugar. After the 1973 oil crisis, someone came up with the idea of converting some of it to ethanol as an alternative to gasoline. (That idea has grown to where there's now a separate program to grow corn solely for the purpose of creating ethanol - a stupid program since sugar beets are much more effective. But that's another issue.). That's why thee programs exist even though they are not cost-effective. The energy cost to grow the food they use is a sunk cost [wikipedia.org] . We're not getting it back no matter what we do. So their economic viability can be calculated assuming the food has zero cost - it's better to do something with the food, rather than let it rot in silos feeding rats.
But the important thing is that as long as these food subsidy programs (and the safety buffer they provide) exist, reducing waste will not reduce the amount of energy devoted to growing food. It will just result in more excess food left over at the end of the year that the government has to figure out some way to get rid of. Same reason why reducing meat consumption won't reduce the amount of energy needed to grow grain to feed cattle - that grain will still end up being produced due to the food subsidies. And worst case it will just end up feeding rats instead of cows.
If you want to reduce food production (since reducing waste won't necessarily reduce production), you need to come up with an idea which guarantees an adequate emergency supply of food in the event of crop failures, without overproducing.
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It's like you learnt the phrase "working as designed", and are looking to apply to as many situations as possible.
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C works as designed. Doesn't mean that all the security issues from easy-to-code bugs aren't a problem.
Food wastage is a problem. So the whole "working as designed" is a classic case of "thought terminating cliche".
You can discuss the p
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Bullshit. I live here. I watch it. That's bullshit.
Eat the bugs and live in the pod (Score:1)
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industrialized farming in Africa
Unfortunately much of the land there is not appropriate for industrialized farming, even with massive influxes of fertilizers and pesticides.
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2 birds 1 stone. (very big stone) (Score:2)
Let's find a way to prevent the upcoming war between the US and China. Let's find ways to redirect large asteroids.
Don't think we can really aim them that well yet?
Is 83% efficiency good or bad? (Score:4, Interesting)
If we consider the overall food supply chain from production to consumer consumption, is 17% total waste a good or a bad result? How much better can the process efficiency get? We have to grow/prepare food based on some consumption predictions, how accurate can they be? Then we have mother nature, where yields cannot be predicted with 100% accuracy, so sometimes more will be produced than needed. Lastly, is it all truly wasted, or is it recycled by composting, or redirecting byproducts for animal feed for example, etc?
Old news (Score:2)
It's fine (Score:2)
Can you predict how much food we need? No. Then it is bettter to produce more than less.
Supermarket offers / packaging? (Score:2)
So, for those of us lucky folk who have some wealth - and who consequently seem to be able to "afford" to be able to waste food, one of the first world problems we face is ... an excess of choice, but sometimes without choice in quantity. In fact, most times.
Sure, I can get single apples, oranges, tomatoes from my local store - there's a fair few products. These are generally perishables that have a longer shelf life.
But if I want to get, say, a handful of spinach for a meal, I can't do that. I have to buy
Idiotic narrative (Score:3)
This story gets repeated periodically, by different "researchers" and with a few tweaked details, but the same junk idea.
Allow me to point out why it's junk:
Food production in the modern industrialized nations is geared to such high efficiency and capacity that it can meet the needs of the population and provide desired variety, and it does this in-part by over-producing. There is simply no way to distribute ANYTHING with 100% efficiency and zero waste, with each person getting exactly what they need, without a theoretical authoritarian dictatorship pointing guns at people, and there's not even any example of THAT model succeeding at the task at any time or place in human history. The over-production model results in surplus, BUT THAT IS NOT "WASTE" - it's the surplus required to make sure the distribution system works as desired. These systems can never distribute all of that surplus perfectly to the people of the third world either - that would require a global dictatorship, which would also fail to distribute it before it rotted. Modern food production is in fact so efficient that food is now so cheap that huge portions of the population (many of them technically in poverty) can afford to overeat and be obese. Compare any pictures of average Americans today to average Americans in 1900 and prepare to be shocked. Compare pictures of Americans in poverty today to pictures of Americans in poverty in 1900 - more shocking. Before somebody pops up with the usual "advocate" position of "those obese Americans today are in food deserts eating 'junk food'", allow me to point out that poor Americans a century ago were eating actual junk for food. Middle class Americans in 1900, and not on farms, ate far less healthy foods and with far less variety. Search the internet for pics of grocery store shelves in 1900, or talk to the very elderly among you about this. Every generation of humans who ever lived before 1900 any where on Earth would have gone to war to have the sort of safe and healthy food, in the variety and abundance we have today - and that provision is only possible because of overproduction and surplus. Get rid of the excess, and the distribution system fails - and then everybody gets to live like people in countries that produce no such surplus.
Oh, and don't worry about eating every scrap on your plate or in your fast food bag because "people are starving in Africa" - it's a human tragedy that large areas of the globe are inhabited by people without the will to stage revolutions to get rid of their marxist leaders and warlords, and who are thus subject to governments who [poorly, of course] allocate food, but nothing you do will get your excess to them, it's either going into your stomach or into the trash and no amount of thinking like a third grader will change that. If you eat it, the imagined starving African will be no better fed than if you toss it.
If you truly care about the starving masses, do not encourage the most energetic and motivated to flee those countries for America or Europe, leaving behind huge populations with no will or ability to throw off the chains; instead, encourage them to stay in their countries and throw revolutions to save the populations of those countries and implement political and economic systems that will also produce food surplusses.
Think of all the starving.... (Score:2)
I thought I got rid of hearing my mother and other adult authorities demand, "Think of all the starving children in China," over 55 years ago. They build in a primal demand that I clean off my bloody plate - now I am obese. Scroom.
{+,+} Bleah!
Cook (Score:1)
One billion tons - right... (Score:2)
When you hear big figures like this, ask them to show their work. They never do.
The figure may be accurate, but only by including all levels of food waste - including a lot that is simply unavoidable. It begins with harvesting: some produce is imperfect and unsuitable for processing - pretzel-shaped carrots, damaged fruit. The outer leaves of lettuce, stripped and left lying on the field.
Then processing. Depending on what it is and how you count, you can seriously inflate your food-waste figures. Exampl
Haha, Right. (Score:2)
Haha, you know what the best thing is you can do to slow down climate change? Commit suicide.
It's the pandemic. (Score:2)
Re: Slurry (Score:2)
Let them eat the rich.
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That's less of an issue than they claim. I used to have friends who dumpster-dived for most of their food, until the supermarkets realized that there were thousands of people doing it nationwide and started dumping chemicals in the dumpsters to keep people from salvaging.
Re: wanna fix it? (Score:2)
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It was Safeway in Florida in the 1980s, the company openly said that they were pouring insecticide in the dumpsters to keep people from getting free food. It was the Reagan years, if you couldn't afford food then you weren't supposed to eat.
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My brief google showed nothing matching your story, and I find it hard to believe that it would have been more than some idiot employee since the company would have been roasted (legally if someone actually got hurt) for doing so...even during the Reagan years.