A Waste of Good Food

For those who missed it, there is an excellent article by Andrew Martin in the May 18 New York Times on how U.S. consumers, supermarkets, and the food distribution system waste food (about 1 pound per day per person). The photo above, which accompanies the article, gives readers a feel for the scale of the waste.

The demand for grain for biofuels, it appears, is only one among many reasons for increases in the cost of food. Food waste, which occurs quite literally at every stage from field to grocery store to plate, is also a major culprit.

Grocery stores discard products because of spoilage or minor cosmetic blemishes. Restaurants throw away what they don’t use. And consumers toss out everything from bananas that have turned brown to last week’s Chinese leftovers. In 1997, in one of the few studies of food waste, the Department of Agriculture estimated that two years before, 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. Fresh produce, milk, grain products and sweeteners made up two-thirds of the waste.

This is an old study, but according to Andrew Martin an update is under way. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency has concluded in a study that

Americans generate roughly 30 million tons of food waste each year, which is about 12 percent of the total waste stream. All but about 2 percent of that food waste ends up in landfills; by comparison, 62 percent of yard waste is composted.

The problem for the planet, it appears, is not just what we eat, but what we don't eat.