WASTE: The American food system needs to be more productive and less wasteful.
By Kate Santoso, Editor
It’s easy for us to go grocery shopping and pick and choose food we want, not food we are physically going to consume. We focus on cheap prices, quality, and health attributes but often fail to account for quantity. No matter how large a serving of a product is, we buy it anyway for the cheap price. Weeks later, products lay neglected at the back of our kitchen cupboards, expired and moldy. According to the article “Why Americans Lead the World in Food Waste” in The Atlantic, “Roughly 50 percent of all produce in the United States is thrown away.” Yes, it is no surprise that Americans lead the world in food waste.
Dr. Roni Neff, a John Hopkins University researcher, recently conducted a study to examine the nutrients we are tossing in the trash. After a close examination of foods trashed, Neff concluded that the most wasted foods are seafood, fruits, and vegetables. Americans often toss fruits and vegetables based on the belief that foods are unsafe if they don’t appear as fresh. However, just because foods don’t appear fresh does not mean they are unsafe to eat. For example, according to the Huffington Post, honey remains safe to eat though “it may change color and become crystallized.” This being said, Americans are losing essential vitamins and minerals such as Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and Calcium through wasted food. According to Food Forward, an organization formed to fight hunger and prevent food waste by rescuing a fresh surplus of produce, “The amount of food thrown away in the United States in 2012 would have been enough to feed 190 million adults every day that year.”
What many Americans don’t realize is that once we throw away our food, its final destination is not the landfills. At the dump, organic waste breaks down and releases methane gas, a potent greenhouse gas. Food loss generates more than four times as much annual greenhouse gas emissions as aviation. We are often unaware of the fact that our global food waste is highly contributing to climate change.
In order to minimize America’s food waste, we must all take small steps to change our bad habits. We must be proactive about eating leftovers and we must stick to our shopping lists and buy products that we are sure to consume. We waste our food as communities around the world suffer without eating for days. By buying less food and consuming it, we can leave groceries and stores with a surplus of food to be given to those who desperately need it. The Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, one of the largest food banks in the nation, partners with stores such as Target and Walmart to provide those who are hungry with food. The organization is being efficient by using a surplus of items at stores to feed the hungry instead of filling up landfills with excess products.
If we, as individuals, work together to reduce our collective food waste, Americans who cannot afford healthy fruits and vegetables can be provided with the necessary nutrients to ensure their health, and people living in poverty in third world countries can be provided with food to survive. In 2016, the U.S Department of Agriculture and the U.S Environmental Protection Agency set the nation’s first-ever food waste goal: a 50 percent reduction by 2030. By refraining from wasting food, Americans can live healthier lifestyles while reducing waste in landfills to preserve more natural resources.
Food waste is becoming a part of the American culture, costing us our time and money. It’s a problem that we rarely pause to think about as we continue to carelessly toss unfinished apple cores and leftovers from last night’s dinner. The American landfills filled with perfectly edible foods serve as a reminder of our ignorance. To preserve the environment we live in and provide for others in need with food, we can make a difference by changing our bad habits and thinking before we buy new products or open the trash can.