Americans Bin 1,400 Calories Each Day
This week's shocking statistic: 40% of all food in the US is discarded.
That's 1,400 calories per person per day.
Or, enough for an average woman on a low-calorie diet.
This figure came to light through new research, led by Kevin Hall, and published in the journal PLoS ONE.
So, why are we wasting so much food? Some of the waste is due to manufacturing processes, but large amounts are being discarded by consumers.
Think about the times you've binned fruits or veggies that went bad. Or, when you cooked too much and ended up binning it. How about the perfectly edible skins which many of us peel and discard?
In a world where a billion people don't have enough food, and two billion are overweight or obese, there's clearly something wrong. Food waste is also harmful to the environment. As Hall points out:
For example, food waste is now estimated to account for more than one quarter of the total freshwater consumption, and more than 300 million barrels of oil per year, representing about 4 percent of the total U.S. oil consumption.
But, what can you do to reduce your own food wastage?
- Compost vegetable peelings where possible (even better, eat the skins - there's a higher concentration of nutrients immediately under the skin).
- Don't overstock the cupboards. Most of us buy more than we need.
- Weigh out pasta, rice and other dried foods before cooking them, so that you only cook what you'll eat.
- Freeze leftovers, or use them up in a different dish.
(For lots of additional tips, try Love Food Hate Waste.)
As well as preventing unnecessary food production and waste disposal, you'll save yourself some cash. Why pay for food you don't eat?
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Created / Updated: December 23, 2009
That's why we plan a weekly menu and create a shopping list based on it. Even the leftovers are taken into account in our meal plans and are eaten. Before we created our list we would bin alot of food because it would just go bad before we wuld eat it. Now we hardly waste any food. Planning prevents wasting and "waisting" of food!
ReplyHi Angie,
ReplyI totally agree with you. Since I started menu planning I've noticed the same. I'd say it's the single most important change I've made for helping my family eat better and reduce waste.
Great points, Angie and Melanie -- I do this too (it's just me and the fiance, so it's easy to plan) -- and it particularly helps with things like veggies.
ReplyI buy things a few at a time, may mean more trips to the store during the week but it's worth it to eat healthy. I also don't like throwing away food because it's a waste of money.
p.s. what on earth is compost....I hear about it but it sounds like some time consuming environmentalist thing. Sorry, I have to work all day and by the time I get home in the dark I'm not going outside to "compost" my leftover potato skins.
ReplyThink of it as a food scrap only bin... It takes about the same amount of time to compost a banana peel as it does to throw it in a bin... I have a compost bin, I just toss my scraps in that & give it a turn once a week (takes 2mins) and then when it all composts down I sprinkle it on my garden.
Of course if you are in an apartment and don't have a garden then you probably don't need to compost!
Replyit is not time consuming at all. The most amount of time you will ever invest in it is the time it takes to purchase a bin (or designate one) and throw in your kitchen scraps. every once in a while dump a container of water on it. That's it! you can even put tea bags and coffee grinds in it.
ReplyI waste barely any food because I am so anal about my shopping/cooking habits. I plan a couple of meals for the week that will reheat well as leftovers and I buy only the perishable groceries that I will need that week. I know about how much produce we'll use during the week and I buy only that much. If I run short, I'll make a mid-week run to the store to pick up more. And if we have food that could potentially go bad before we use it all, I freeze it.
I think I'm so uptight about it because I come from a family of such food-wasters and my husband comes from a family of VERY frugal cooks who use absolutely everything. When I was a kid, I remember being SO grossed out by the concept of food getting moldy--I'd go to grab the cream cheese for my bagel and it would be growing this nasty green fuzz on it. Or taking a piece of bread from the loaf and finding a moldy spot AFTER making a sandwich with it. Ugh, stuff like that just totally grosses me out so I've become more like my inlaws...use everything and try not to let things spoil.
ReplyYuck, yes, I can't be doing with mould on bread! (In fact, we freeze almost all our bread -- otherwise half the loaf's gone stale before we eat it).
Sounds like planning ahead is definitely the key!
ReplyMy mom's family lives in rural Mississippi. They collect table scraps in a bucket under the kitchen sink, then feed it to their dogs. Weird to city people like me, but apparently an old and common practice.
ReplyWow, I must be way off from the norm - I hardly ever trash ANY food. I love to eat too much to throw it away!! :)
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