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Why we throw away more than 6M tonnes of groceries every year (2015)

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Re: Why we throw away more than 6M tonnes of groceries every year (2015)

#11

Post by nickff »

ftvbffg wrote: post #6

Food waste is very small problem. If it was eliminated there would be 1.5 times as much food. Bigger problem is eating out (restaurants, fast food) where 90% of money is wasted. Or buying expensive ingredients like meat or very processed foods. 10 times more food can be bought if choosing wisely. I pay maybe 4$-5$/day for food and I routinely throw away half. That's 2$/day wasted. But eating at restaurant wastes so m…

Eating at restaurants is not a waste of money, it is much more efficient for many people. At a restaurant, you can get food much more quickly, and with no cleanup time afterwards; if you value your time, this can quite easily turn out to be a cost savings compared to home-prepared meals (especially if you value variety).

It used to be more common to purchase restaurant food, and home-cooked meals were a luxury for the rich a few hundred years ago, but income and sales tax have imposed higher transaction costs, and made restaurant food more expensive.

Re: Why we throw away more than 6M tonnes of groceries every year (2015)

#12

Post by sndean »

> Suddenly, for many Westerners, the problem with food was that there was too much of it.

Whenever eating around some friends from South Asian countries who grew up just barely on the positive side of starving, I always make a point of eating everything on my plate (or all the meat off the bone). Because lots of times I've gotten the comment "you eat like a white person."

But I wonder how much of that is cultural and how much is socioeconomic? Do poorer people in the US also waste a lot of food? Do wealthy people in India waste a lot of food?

Re: Why we throw away more than 6M tonnes of groceries every year (2015)

#13

Post by greenshackle »

ftvbffg wrote: post #6

Food waste is very small problem. If it was eliminated there would be 1.5 times as much food. Bigger problem is eating out (restaurants, fast food) where 90% of money is wasted. Or buying expensive ingredients like meat or very processed foods. 10 times more food can be bought if choosing wisely. I pay maybe 4$-5$/day for food and I routinely throw away half. That's 2$/day wasted. But eating at restaurant wastes so m…

How much time do you spend grocery shopping and cooking?

If you make 100$ per hour it doesnt take long before eating out is more economical.

Re: Why we throw away more than 6M tonnes of groceries every year (2015)

#14

Post by tedmiston »

sakopov wrote: post #2

This guy [1] made it across the US on a bike with no cash by simply dumpster-diving and eating nearly fresh fruits and veggies thrown away by grocery stores. Here [2] he is dumpster-diving in San Diego. It's amazing how much foods gets wasted. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7QO-4NjgjQ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Gn_T1zQFc

It's not as uncommon as you might think. There are entire forums dedicated to finding the best businesses to dumpster dive from.

Re: Why we throw away more than 6M tonnes of groceries every year (2015)

#15

Post by forgetsusername »

ftvbffg wrote: post #6

Food waste is very small problem. If it was eliminated there would be 1.5 times as much food. Bigger problem is eating out (restaurants, fast food) where 90% of money is wasted. Or buying expensive ingredients like meat or very processed foods. 10 times more food can be bought if choosing wisely. I pay maybe 4$-5$/day for food and I routinely throw away half. That's 2$/day wasted. But eating at restaurant wastes so m…

What you spend at a restaurant is someone else's income, so it's not really wasted.

Throwing food away is a net loss of a valuable resource.

Re: Why we throw away more than 6M tonnes of groceries every year (2015)

#17

Post by jimjimjim »

ftvbffg wrote: post #6

Food waste is very small problem. If it was eliminated there would be 1.5 times as much food. Bigger problem is eating out (restaurants, fast food) where 90% of money is wasted. Or buying expensive ingredients like meat or very processed foods. 10 times more food can be bought if choosing wisely. I pay maybe 4$-5$/day for food and I routinely throw away half. That's 2$/day wasted. But eating at restaurant wastes so m…

Maybe this is a US thing?

I can't really imagine relying on a restaurant or fast food for day-to-day food.

For a restaurant to survive they will add things to the food to TASTE better than competing restaurants, this will almost always be salt, sugar and oil/butter. Like humans think music recorded slightly louder is richer than music recorded slight quieter, I don't think people realize why one restaurants food tastes better than another.

so sure for socializing, meals while traveling and special occasions restaurants are fantastic, but surely day-to-day it's gotta be bad for you.

Re: Why we throw away more than 6M tonnes of groceries every year (2015)

#18

Post by forgetsusername »

cies wrote: post #3

Too long of a read for me. Yet I do have an opinion :) In capitalism a business is allowed to throw out what it wants; we have seen many products simply destroy in order not "destroy the market". But capitalism is wrong --IMHO-- and wasting resources I deem sinful. We should try to avoid wasting resources, and we can. Simply put some laws in place that "tax" wasting resources to the extend that businesses become wast…

>But believe that we can inspire each other to live in a less wasteful way

Really? Because you literally could not be bothered to read an article with subject matter that you apparently have a interest in, the purpose of which was to "inspire" people to be less wasteful.

Re: Why we throw away more than 6M tonnes of groceries every year (2015)

#19

Post by AnimalMuppet »

cies wrote: post #3

Too long of a read for me. Yet I do have an opinion :) In capitalism a business is allowed to throw out what it wants; we have seen many products simply destroy in order not "destroy the market". But capitalism is wrong --IMHO-- and wasting resources I deem sinful. We should try to avoid wasting resources, and we can. Simply put some laws in place that "tax" wasting resources to the extend that businesses become wast…

Throwing away food is wasteful. The trick is to find an alternative that is less wasteful.

Thought experiment: Collect all of that wasted food. Get it to poor people in the US, refugees, food pantries, someone who can truly use it. How much fuel does that take, driving around collecting it all? How many people does that take? Once you account for both human and energy expenditures, is it a net win? Is it less wasteful, or more, to fix this?

Re: Why we throw away more than 6M tonnes of groceries every year (2015)

#20

Post by woodandsteel »

I think a large part of the reason people waste so much food is that the human mind was designed for a hunter-gatherer way of life. It's hard to get enough food that way, so people ate everything they got. But today we get our food at supermarkets full of far more than we need, and are encouraged in many subtle ways to do so.

Also, I am thinking that if a food conservation movement started to get some real traction, it would cut into food industry profits, and so that industry would start a campaign to undermine food conservation.

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