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Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#51

Post by toomuchtodo »

disputin wrote: post #31
k-mcgrady wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "we'd throw away excess bread at the end of each day" And here's the problem. Good food getting wasted. That bread would be perfectly fine the next day and 90% of people would be happy with it but the business would rather waste it and have something perfect. The same thing happens in grocery stores. If a multi pack of crisps/chips splits they throw out the entire thing even though every pack inside the large cont…

I'm guessing you got voted down because people don't want to eat bread baked the previous evening. Of course, I don't know because there are no frikkin' comments from the trigger happy. Even if they don't like your bread idea, doesn't your multi-pack point cancel that out? Waitrose discounts ageing sandwiches. I think you have a point that small improvements could be made in multiple areas. Assuming waste is a proble…

Jimmy Johns, the sandwich shop, specifically markets their day-old bread for 50 cents/loaf. It appears there is a (small) market for less than perfect food.

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#52

Post by toomuchtodo »

Retric wrote: post #48
SixSigma wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food only looks cheap at the point of consumption. Millions of tax dollars went into the subsidy.

Depends on the type, some food receives no subsidy. Meat tends to receive a huge subsidys.

http://farm.ewg.org/

2013 Farm Subsidy Database is above. Almost every crop is subsidized in one way or another.

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#53

Post by adventured »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #50

There are questions here which the story doesn't answer and I think might be germane to the issues. One is what is the per capita amount of food thrown out between now and 1960. The population according to the census went from 180M to 308M or an increase of 71%. At a simple geometric ratio if you assume that would make 20M lbs the '1960's equivalent. And there is the sudden change in the slope in 1980, (what is up wi…

The slope is caused by the rapid and dramatic rise in insta-meals for the home. Americans began to adopt an entirely different approach to making food at home, and eating with the family, as compared to the prior decades.

Microwaves, frozen dinners, quick-prep foods from the grocery store, etc.

The focus became a lot less on quality and more on speed and convenience. If something is a blah $3 quick meal (circa 1985), most people probably began to feel indifferent about throwing out the left-overs, as compared to spending an hour preparing something of greater quality.

I also doubt that spike is exact to lifting off in a singular point in 1980. It's likely not very precise data, and is instead a best-guesstimate (note also of course it tracks by decade rather than year, another sign they don't have precise data).

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#54

Post by mga226 »

patio11 wrote: post #3
anigbrowl wrote: post #2

But there's another less apparent problem with food waste: the threat to the environment. Landfills full of decomposing food release methane, which is said to be at least 20 times more lethal a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Surely this just releases carbon that was fixed during the development of the plant/animal that is now decomposing? I'm a little unclear on why this is worse than natural decomposition. I wo…

I'm guessing it is mostly increasing affluence [+], partially causing a portion size war for food other than prepared-at-home meals (which are a much larger percentage of the US diet in 2014 as compared to 1980), and partially applying somewhat richer standards with regards to what food is fresh enough for consumption. At a certain point of affluence, why have three day old leftovers (even if they're palatable) when…

> eat foot which is less than maximally palatable to me

I'm embarrassed to admit that I spent several minutes trying to make sense of this comment before realizing you almost certainly meant "eat food..."

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#55

Post by pessimizer »

Individuals are not particularly responsible for this, this is bad business behavior. Supermarkets and restaurants waste a lot of food as part of normal business. I'd be surprised if I've personally thrown out more food than I could hold in the past two years. I remember throwing out a couple of inches of a half gallon of spoiled milk a month ago, I think.

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#57

Post by Retric »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #52
Retric wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the type, some food receives no subsidy. Meat tends to receive a huge subsidys.

http://farm.ewg.org/ 2013 Farm Subsidy Database is above. Almost every crop is subsidized in one way or another.

"82 percent of farms in Washington did not collect subsidy payments - according to USDA. Ten percent collected 67 percent of all subsidies."

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#58

Post by alexeisadeski3 »

Retric wrote: post #57
toomuchtodo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://farm.ewg.org/ 2013 Farm Subsidy Database is above. Almost every crop is subsidized in one way or another.

"82 percent of farms in Washington did not collect subsidy payments - according to USDA. Ten percent collected 67 percent of all subsidies."

Relevant number is percent of food not percent of farms.

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#59

Post by Retric »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #58
Retric wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"82 percent of farms in Washington did not collect subsidy payments - according to USDA. Ten percent collected 67 percent of all subsidies."

Relevant number is percent of food not percent of farms .

I never said anything about percent of food, my comment was based on type of food. We have huge subsidies for some types of food. That does not mean ex: pot growers get a large subsidy. It's really a fairly narrow group of foods which get the vast majority of subsidies and are then produced in truly mind boggling quantities.

There was a great corn documentary a while ago where a small processor kept making larger larger grain silo's for a while as productivity increased. Until, they simply gave up they now just have a huge pile with a tarp over it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1112115/

Re: Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

#60

Post by alexeisadeski3 »

Retric wrote: post #59
alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant number is percent of food not percent of farms .

I never said anything about percent of food, my comment was based on type of food. We have huge subsidies for some types of food. That does not mean ex: pot growers get a large subsidy. It's really a fairly narrow group of foods which get the vast majority of subsidies and are then produced in truly mind boggling quantities. There was a great corn documentary a while ago where a small processor kept making larger lar…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_effect
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