Forty percent is a significant value. It represents four out of ten people, items, or ideas. Sometimes it indicates progress, sometimes it indicates regression. However, there is a specific forty percent that accounts for a big problem that involves all the people on this world. This percentage causes hunger, suffering and death. According to the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), of the total food that is produced in the United States, forty percent is thrown away each year. Food is not being properly distributed nor consumed, and the least lucky are paying for it with their lives. There are many fields and areas involved in food production and responsible for big amounts of food waste, but a big part of this problem occurs at our houses while we live our daily life. There are three major reasons why people throw food away; they do not like it, they have had enough, and/or they think the food expired because a label tells them so.
When that much food is discarded, it has an effect on the country’s economy and it ultimately affect all the people living in it. There is approximately a $48.3 billion loss each year that is caused by food waste. The problem is even more concerning when we add the fact that we throw as much food as the total production of entire regions in the world, for example, sub-Saharan Africa. While there is people suffering and dying of hunger every day, there is also people who does not take full advantage of the resources that are given to them.
There is one thing that stands out when talking about causes of food waste, and it is the “best by” or “consume before” labels. 90% of Americans gets confused by this labels and throw food away the day after it “expires”. A good percentage of these labels are n...
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...ces where food is sold and consumed. For example, Central wholesale market in Lahore, Pakistan. The food trade takes place “among unsanitary conditions, causing major health hazards since food is handled and piled on the ground close to the gutter. This kind of market environment also causes food waste, since the unsanitary conditions and rough handling cause deterioration of fragile fresh products.
In conclusion, we should all improve our approach towards all activities related to food. This is a situation that needs to be handled carefully because food is something extremely valuable that we cannot afford to throw away. Food is unequally distributed throughout the globe and while most of us can’t solve the problem of distribution, the least we can do is use the resources that we acquire wisely. In that way, we save money and help the world become a better place.
In order to bring about change in this misuse of food, Americans need to be conscious of the problem and their practices, the environmental effects, and ways they can reduce waste. In the first place, Americans need to be conscious of the problem and their practices. In her article, Eliana Dockterman states that the National Resources Defense Council has estimated that 40% of the food
The book The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food, by Wayne Roberts introduces us to the concept of “food system”, which has been neglected by many people in today’s fast-changing and fast-developing global food scene. Roberts points out that rather than food system, more people tend to recognize food as a problem or an opportunity. And he believes that instead of considering food as a “problem”, we should think first and foremost about food as an “opportunity”.
As Americans, we waste more food than many countries even consume. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, “The average American trashes 10 times as much food as a consumer in South east Asia” (Hsu). That is about equivalent to eating 10 meals to a consumer in South East Asia’s one meal. We throw away our left over food just because we are done ea...
In our fast pace society, we base everything on time and money. This need to save money and time has transformed the way we see food and purchase food. Food is an essential part of all cultures. It plays a role in every person’s life. The population has the power to choose what we eat and how the food industry is shaped. There are many important questions that we need to ask ourselves in order to keep the food industry in check. These questions are: How do we know our food is safe? What should we eat? How should food be distributed? What is good food? These are simple yet difficult questions.
According to Roni Neff, Marie Spiker, and Patricia Truant, up to 40% of all food produced in America is thrown away (Neff, Spiker, & Truant, 2015, p.2). This wasted food is worth hundreds of billions of dollars that is lost each year in the United States alone, and creates many threats to our country. Food waste is an important and widespread issue in the United States because most of the food thrown away is perfectly fine, it could be used to feed the hungry, and the waste hurts the environment.
American Wasteland by Jonathan Bloom is a great book where he has been researching about food waste and providing us with facts about this big issue. Bloom’s tone is very optimistic, he knows that is not too late to change our minds while giving us information on who’s to blame for this waste, How have we come to produce so much excess food, what are the solutions to stop wasting nearly 50% of available food. There is many great points found in this book such as food insecurity, redistribution and cultural shift.
...s that the processed food is going to waste. “In addition, a growing number of consumers are asking questions about where their food was produced, how it was produced, and who produced it (Hendrickson).”
According to the film, America throws away 96 million pounds of food every year. Much of this food is edible. Based upon a U.S. Department of Agriculture report in 1996 (cited in the film), if we could recover 25% of food that is wasted, we could feed 20 million people. In addition to the lost opportunity of feeding hungry Americans, the wasted food contributes to ever-growing landfills
Though many will see this as only having an affect on Americans, this wastefulness affects everyone on a global scale. Samuel Blackstone wrote the article Waste management: Food waste is a massive global problem, but the solution starts with your Thanksgiving leftovers in 2016 which states “food that is grown but ultimately wasted occupies 1.4 billion hectares of land, representing 30 percent of the world’s entire agricultural land area.”. We may not cause all the worlds food waste, but the waste that we do cause needs to be
The second module focuses on the importance of obtaining food justice in order to understand how changes need to be made within the global food system. In order to have food justice present, individuals need to focus on concepts such as food security and food sovereignty to examine the deeper problems embedded within our society. For instance, this module has presented how the terminology of words can create certain limitations on trying to achieve change. In both Pinstrup (2009) and Maxwell’s (1996) articles they explore the term food security and the different ways this term can be viewed. Maxwell (1996) explores three different shifts in thinking about food security and the problems that come about with this thinking. I believe it is important
Food to many of us is a very important necessity that doesn't cross our mind of having much value, but food is what fuels us it's what keeps us alive and to even think some people struggle to put food on the table is disgusting and inhuman, it means these people are struggling to live all while America is wasting around 40% of its food supply. As humans, we have a responsibility to take care of our fellow human's, everyone has the right to live but they won't be able to live if they die from hunger. It's important to understand why we as humans waste so much food because once we know then we also know how to stop.
There are many problems confronting our global food system. One of them is that the food is not distributed fairly or evenly in the world. According “The Last Bite Is The World’s Food System Collapsing?” by Bee Wilson, “we are producing more food—more grain, more meat, more fruits and vegetables—than ever before, more cheaply than ever before” (Wilson, 2008). Here we are, producing more and more affordable food. However, the World Bank recently announced that thirty-three countries are still famine and hungers as the food price are climbing. Wilson stated, “despite the current food crisis, last year’s worldwide grain harvest was colossal, five per cent above the previous year’s” (Wilson, 2008). This statement support that the food is not distributed evenly. The food production actually increased but people are still in hunger and malnutrition. If the food were evenly distributed, this famine problem would’ve been not a problem. Wilson added, “the food economy has created a system in w...
The first step in achieving food security is to maximise the use of food already being produced and to minimise its waste. The FAO (2013) estimates that 1.3 billion tonnes
Individuals waste some $14.6 billion worth of food every year, about 47 percent of the total. This mainly consists of food items that Canadians buy with the intention of using in their homes, but never do, so it ends up eventually in a landfill or composted. This is a very sensitive environmental issue as these composting facilities create massive amount of Methane gas that are released into the environment, damaging the ozone and attributing to the man-made manipulation of the global warming/cooling process. Food manufacturing and processing is responsible for as much as one-fifth of the food wasted across the country. Ten per cent of food waste happens on the farm, before even entering the larger food system. Retailers waste another 10 per cent. Restaurants and hotels waste a further nine per cent. The rest is wasted at processing facilities such as food terminals, or during transportation. The report notes that food waste in the travel sector is especially egregious — up to five kilograms per person, per day, according to some estimates. Even using more conservative estimates, these watchdog groups say that we could feed 200,000 inhabitants of poorer countries for a year with nothing more than the food that gets wasted on European airlines every year. On international flights, regulations require any excess food be thrown out after a flight — regardless of whether it was used, cruise liners seem to be the worst culprit, generating the highest per capita food waste. Waste like that costs everyone, not just the person who
Food waste is defined by food that is lost, wasted, or discarded and is caused through a few different processes. Food is wasted through many different ways at farms, grocery stores, and in homes. Over 40% of the food in the United States, specifically, goes to waste and 97% percent of this waste goes straight to landfills. The main issue with food waste is that the majority of food is being wasted unnecessarily. In stores, food is often thrown out because it does not meet specific standards that dictate what may be desirable to consumers. This issue of food picking is important as foods are not always being thrown away because they have gone bad, but because they have appearances that do not seem attractive. If we hope to lessen the environmental impact we have as a result of the mass