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Food waste essay in the us
Food waste essay in the us
Food waste essay in the us
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According to the Washington Post, the United States wastes over 165 billion dollars in food every year. Interesting enough, 40% of all the food in the United States goes to waste. Starting at the farms, 7% of crops and produce are wasted. This is due to the lack of need, crops not meeting standards, and some crops just don’t get selected. Sometimes when an outbreak of diseased food is going around perfectly good crops will be left to rot. After the produce is collected a lot of the product is discarded because it doesn’t meet standards for size, shape, or color. A farmer who produces a great deal of cucumbers stated, “fewer than half the vegetables left his farm and 75% of those were culled before sale”. Another scenario to consider is technical
The majority of people waste food on a daily basis. In fact, in the U.S. alone there is an estimate that over half of the food produced goes uneaten; meanwhile there are people who are in need of food, and it ultimately goes to waste (Dockterman). For example, in his essay, “On Dumpster Diving,” author Lars Eighner writes about his experiences of dumpster diving with his pet dog, during his years of homelessness. According to Eighner, much of the food and materials he came across in the dumpsters were in usable shape, and many items were new. Clearly there needs to be a change in American food waste, in current and, hopefully not so much in, future generations.
Seifert travels around to different grocery chains and retailers in his area of the state of California and films his experiences. For example, Seifert and his team would find bags of fruit in dumpsters that would only have one or two spoiled pieces, but was still discarded. That’s two apples out of a bag of twelve being discarded, while wasting ten other apples that are still edible. Because stores are so carefree about what they throw away, it makes you wonder if production is causing an overload in food. Do they have the mentality that it will never run out?
More than $31 billion worth of food is wasted every year in Canada and when energy, water and other resource costs are factored in the true cost could be up to as much as $107 Billion each year according to a report published by Value Chain Management International, a consulting firm, which suggests that millions of kilograms of food is wasted every year in Canadian homes, restarants, & grocery stores. This finding shows a 15 % increase from their findings four years ago when the cost was $27 Billion,in 2010. They also go on to say that this is 2% of Canada s GDP and larger than the total economic output of the poorest 29 countries on the planet.
In the United States, Food is one of the basic needs of life.We tend to spend tons of money every year to buy food. Consuming food reflects America’s culture in the United States. In America, Fast food is a way to enjoy delicious food made with sugar, fat and salt. It’s impossible to back away from eating good tasting food. Unfortunately, this is leading to major destruction. In the human life, food procurement, preparation, and consumption have devoted to an art form.Spite the terms of “America has a food problem,” it shows that our nation is unable to produce and supply safe, nutritious food in a way where it sustains our global population. Health Issues are a result of over consumption, which lead to portion sizes, and food production.
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.
The purpose of the study is to determine how sustainable food is helping America economically and health wise rather than unsustainable foods. In this study I will examine what it means for food to be sustainable and unsustainable. I will find out how America is able to stay strong due to the use of sustainable foods. While, showing that America is also slowly dying, because of the problem, which is unsustainable foods. In this study I will also determine how unsustainable is destroying America's environment.
My family already has a composting pile in the yard and I never really noticed its value. I always thought of it as a pile of trash and would be reluctant to recycle leftovers when my parents told me to. It would have been so much easier to just throw everything away in the trashcan. In “Waste Not Want Not” Bill McKibben states that, “we toss 14 percent of the food we buy at the store” (304). That is a lot of food that can be put to better use instead of being wasted. Old food scraps will eventually turn into rich soil that can be used to grow an organic garden. The produce that I buy in the grocery store is not as healthy as I think it is because most of it is filled with chemicals that can be harmful to humans. There is a “displacement of nearly the entire farming population and the replacement of their labor and good farming practices by machines and toxic chemicals” (Berry 401). Using compost to plant my own food I do not have to live in fear about what I am feeding to my family. Composting is not only a good source to keep food out of landfills but it promotes a healthy and natural lifestyle.
Studies show that the reason why food is being wasted is because of their color or shape. Food shouldn’t be judged by their color on their prospective for that reason is just like bring up racism. People are being judge by their color whether they are black, white, Mexican etc. Therefore, food is being waste for so much judgement. When there is hungry people around the world. People who cannot afford food or cities that cannot grow their own supplies. There is an article written by a student name Anna Lee. Anna Lee has proven in the article how fruits and vegetables are being thrown away because they’re not perfect.(the Washington Post) She commented how farmers would state the fact if fruits nor vegetables are not pretty enough but it’s still food because how nature has brought it to us that we should be thankful for them.(Washingtonpost) Such as, we say god has made us the way we are each individual of us are different by one way or
When food is wasted water is wasted. The amount of food that gets wasted everyday worldwide is incredibly high. There
1,300 and $2,200 a year,” (Bloom) and for less fortunate families, those couple thousand dollars could be detrimental to their financial stability. “48.1 million Americans lived in food-insecure households, including more than 15 million children.” (Hunger and Poverty). It can be easy to agree with this statement but if you put into consideration that it is against the law for restaurants and other food sales establishments to sell food that does meet certain standards, then most people will see the need to disregard of the food found in their homes as well.
In order for us to get anywhere with reducing food waste is by joining up as a strong united nation and setting an example for the branches lower than us. The federal government should set example for state governments then state governments should set an example for local government which will therefore lead to individual people setting examples and awareness. Now to my next subject, the way we can advance the nutritional content of crops are by using things that we know about the development of scientific subjects such as Biotechnology which is the use of living cells, bacteria, etc., to make useful products such as crops that insects are less likely to destroy or new kinds of medicine. If we make substances that are beneficial to crops but not insects then we can reduce the amount of crops that are destroyed by them. In my opinion we have many security detection systems so if we could create a detection system that detects if something is wrong with the crop or if a bug is on
“Man, I am stuffed! I cannot possibly finish all of this,” a line all too common in America and spoken by millions each day. You are eating dinner and then about halfway through, you realize that your stomach is just about full and cannot take in any more food. The food left over is destine to go in the trash, adding to the annual billions of dollars in food being wasted just in America. Here in the United States, it seems like our food stock is unlimited, but in many countries around the world, a single crumb of food is a pure luxury and is praised. When you think about it, our discarding of perfectly good food is a serious problem and needs to be solved soon. Solving this situation all starts with you. A way to reduce waste is only taking
I have chosen the topic of food waste and the impact on the environment. I will discuss the ridiculous amount of food that is wasted each year and the staggering amount of waste that could be avoided just by planning ahead, and purchasing from farmer’s markets and avoiding the main stream supermarkets who set such high standards on the aesthetic of produce that tonnes are wasted for no reason other then shape.
Food waste is the biggest space consumer in our landfills, which may seem surprising, but shouldn’t be based on the amount of food that is consumed on a daily basis and the large proportion of food that is wasted. The main problem with the amount of food waste in landfills, is that it produces methane as it decomposes which is detrimental to the atmosphere as a whole, and can have lasting effects. The buildup of all the methane produced results in huge amounts of global warming potential which is extremely detrimental to our environment. Also, because of the fact that so many resources are used in order to grow certain foods, they are all being put to waste when the food that used these resources goes directly to landfills. This applies to water usage, soil richness, and petroleum usage. As far as costs go, food waste affects the economy by about $750 billion a year, which is a massive amount of money that could be going elsewhere. Because we are losing so much money, it is clear that there is a great need for change in the food system, especially in the United
The amount of food that is wasted in the world is astronomical, Finn states about 1.3 billion tons goes to waste annually. 40% of food goes uneaten just in the United States. The amount that is produced goes back to how and where it is produced and The