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$165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

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Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#41

Post by patio11 »

batgaijin wrote: post #18

5% of our population is starving/malnourished children... http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/chi... Everyone reading this forum has probably never come close to actually dealing with the poverty levels that afflict a surprisingly large amount of people in America. The level of accepted inequality with almost no social welfare net is atrocious.

Food insecurity is not starvation -- it is a metric created to justify ongoing concern, because starvation went up against science/capitalism/etc and lost, badly. I literally count as food insecure unless I attempt to defeat that conclusion by lying to the survey. You don't have to worry too much about me, and if you knew my situation when I was a kid (and squarely within the intention of the definition, in those days), you could be excused for not worrying all that much.

I'm about to say something which is indelicate, but probably true.

Poor Somalis look like poor Chinese look like poor Brazilians look like poor peasants from the Middle Ages, because human physiology reacts to starvation in predictable ways. Poor Americans do not resemble any of the above, because to the extent they have a problem with food, it is that they consume far too much of it. You can measure the nutritional consumption of poor Americans. We have. It is statistically virtually indistinguishable from that of rich Americans. Poor American kids? Same story.

(Some people might phrase poor folks' food problems as "too much of the wrong food", but I think this conflates the problem with a moral judgment about food-as-values-signaling. One of the reasons we stigmatize e.g. Coke over e.g. fresh squeezed orange juice is precisely because poor people drink Coke and rich people drink fresh squeezed orange juice. Both would be better off with switching more of their beverage consumption to tap water.)

See generally :

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1990/09/how-poor-ar...

or you can make anecdotal observations by going to any high-poverty region of America and, well, looking.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#42

Post by nmridul »

mbreese wrote: post #37
graeme wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surplus food consumption and waste in San Francisco/America raises food prices globally. A lot of that food will be wasted imports, or food that could have been exported if not bought by American consumers.

Only on products that can be exported or are otherwise fungible, primarily grains. But you'd also have to calculate the costs of shipping excess grain to the comparison of global grain prices, because it's a tad bit expensive to ship tons of grain around the world. And then you'd also have to calculate the effects of a smaller market on the produce sellers of the world. I'm sure that farmers who export food to the US…

The economies are inter connected. So you don't really need to export to lower the price abroad. A lower demand for a food item in a big consumer country like US is enough to reduce the food price around the globe.

The surplus thrown away food if saved could be money that could have funded another venture or at the very least spent on holiday shopping in the US. So this is a loss to the American economy.

In general, wasting is a loss to the economy, loss the environment and to mankind.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#43

Post by Shivetya »

ars wrote: post #14
jon6 wrote: post #3

165 billion divided by the population (311 million) divided by 365 days is about $1.45. irb(main):007:0> 165e9 / 311e6 / 365.0 => 1.45355239395675 Which thankfully also is consistent with the other number mentioned in the article, $2275 for a family of 4 per year. irb(main):005:0> 2275.0 / 4 / 365 => 1.55821917808219 Doesn't seem like a lot can be done about such a small amount of waste per day..

I suspect a HUGE amount of the waste is industrial - events, parties, weddings, restaurants, things like that. It's the same with virtually all resource usage in this country (water, energy, etc) industry uses so much compared to the average house that it's pointless to even try to conserve at home. On a positive note it means if you actually want to conserve it's easier: There are far fewer targets to work with, and…

It is never pointless to conserve. If anything it benefits you.

As for businesses, giving away expired or unused food has liability and tax concerns. The liability is probably the primary reason for not doing so. Having worked in a bakery over twenty years ago they used to give expired bread to a local charity until they were blocked by county health officials. Mind you, nothing was wrong with the bread, it was merely too old for them to sell.

Then you top it off with the fact many charities want money, not old food - even canned food that is not expired is not wanted except by select charities or at certain times of the year.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#44

Post by rorrr »

batgaijin wrote: post #18

5% of our population is starving/malnourished children... http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/chi... Everyone reading this forum has probably never come close to actually dealing with the poverty levels that afflict a surprisingly large amount of people in America. The level of accepted inequality with almost no social welfare net is atrocious.

If you're starving in the USA, it's most likely the fault of your parents/guardians, not because there's no free food available.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#45

Post by ollysb »

noonespecial wrote: post #30

Some of that cost (just some of it now, don't freak out on me) is the price we pay for sanitation and hygiene. Sure we could make more efficient use of food by handing that half-eaten Big Mac to the guy behind us in line, but that might end up costing more in the long run. Like filesystems, we lose some food to partitioning, clustering and fragmentation.

I've only travelled to America once, Florida. One of my lasting impressions was the size of portions when eating out. You ask for an individual salad and you're given a bowl that's twice as big as a salad you might share between a table where I currently live(Spain). Maybe salad isn't the best example, but it extended to every meal I ordered, chips, meat, pasta, whatever. Whenever an order arrived the eyebrows around my table would go up, followed by some gentle laughing about how we're going to finish it all...

Smaller portions would go a long way towards reducing waste. You can always order more food, but as you say, once food has been delivered on a plate it can only really go in the bin.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#46

Post by lloeki »

jasonkester wrote: post #24

How are they calculating the value of food thrown away? Are they assuming you could deconstruct the uneaten portion into its ingredients then resell them at their retail price? Perhaps pro-rating the menu price of a restaurant dish? Or are they using the actual street value of a half-eaten Applebee's chicken fried steak? If they're doing the latter then yeah, that's pretty wasteful. If not, they're just doing bad mat…

I think that's rather the cost of actually producing and delivering the food to people, and therefore the theoretical saving made by not producing it in the first place.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#47

Post by rjshade »

wonnage wrote: post #6

When I'm sitting in my chair and reading about bakeries throwing out day-old bread, it sounds wasteful; when I actually go to buy bread, I'm looking for the freshest, warmest loaf I can get. And thanks to privileged, illogical, fresh-bread-seeking bourgeois like me, the bakery's inclined to toss perfectly good bread. Thinking about this, I'm convinced it's all just because we have enough resources to allow this waste…

Americans wasting/not wasting some of their surplus food (in America!) is not going to affect starving people elsewhere

The money used to buy (and then waste) surplus food could be donated to the most effective charities[1][2], thereby saving lives. You could donate directly to charities which feed starving people although these may not do the most good (in terms of lives saved per dollar donated).

[1]http://www.givewell.org/ [2]http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/resources/charity-comparisons...

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#48

Post by batista »

patio11 wrote: post #41
batgaijin wrote: post #18

5% of our population is starving/malnourished children... http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/chi... Everyone reading this forum has probably never come close to actually dealing with the poverty levels that afflict a surprisingly large amount of people in America. The level of accepted inequality with almost no social welfare net is atrocious.

Food insecurity is not starvation -- it is a metric created to justify ongoing concern, because starvation went up against science/capitalism/etc and lost, badly. I literally count as food insecure unless I attempt to defeat that conclusion by lying to the survey. You don't have to worry too much about me, and if you knew my situation when I was a kid (and squarely within the intention of the definition, in those day…

>Food insecurity is not starvation

Pointless pedantic distinction from the well-fed. Try it for a month and then we can talk. I have some friends in MS that beg to differ. Not to mention that it comes with tons of other stuff like lack of health coverage, housing, bad sanitation, etc.

>* -- it is a metric created to justify ongoing concern, because starvation went up against science/capitalism/etc and lost, badly.*

You have to see the TCO, so to speak. Because capitalism (as practiced, not some theoretical model) in the US and Europe also created massive famines, lack of development and poverty elsewhere, on societies forced to structure themselves and produce for the benefit and under the design of their colonial overlords. The western economy, for example, feeds on cheap oil, which it gets by preying on oil producing countries.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#49

Post by batista »

bambax wrote: post #28
jon6 wrote: post #3

165 billion divided by the population (311 million) divided by 365 days is about $1.45. irb(main):007:0> 165e9 / 311e6 / 365.0 => 1.45355239395675 Which thankfully also is consistent with the other number mentioned in the article, $2275 for a family of 4 per year. irb(main):005:0> 2275.0 / 4 / 365 => 1.55821917808219 Doesn't seem like a lot can be done about such a small amount of waste per day..

$1.45 per person x day is not a "small" amount; for a family of four it's $174 per month: twice or thrice the price of a typical Internet subscription which everyone finds expensive... But of course what the article doesn't say is where this waste happens: in the home or in food-processing plants, or as unsold inventory in supermarkets, etc.

Even 500 dollars a year ($1.45 for one person) income puts you in the "top 80%" of the world, which means there's a billion people that make LESS than that.

$1,000 a year puts you in the 50% of the world per income.

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

(It seemed too small to me too, until I visited places were people earn $1 a day, like Cambodia -- that is, less than $500 per year).

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#50

Post by mewmoo »

kamaal wrote: post #38

I may be wrong here. But every time the topic of food wastage comes up. People really talk about hungry people across the world and how it can be delivered to them instead of being wasted here. The reason why most people don't get food is because they can't afford it, not because food is in short supply. The solution to these problems really is to improve their living conditions by giving them jobs by which they can…

The reason why most people don't get food is because they can't afford it, not because food is in short supply.

Seriously? Do you think the market is a magical and mystical unicorn we shall never understand?

The reason they can't afford it is because of supply and demand. When the rich have a high demand for food, the prices go up. THAT is why they can't eat.

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