Reducing Food Waste In America
America as a whole wastes a lot of food. America can save on food waste if consumers would purchase only what they need, stores and restaurants give surplus food to shelters and soup kitchens, and schools had waste education and waste reduction programs in place. First, America would be able to save on food waste if consumers purchased only what they needed. People would not have to worry about forgotten food that will expire and needs to be thrown away. Another way consumers can prevent food waste is creating a food menu before they go to the shopping for food, by doing this consumers will only buy what they are going to cook, thus leading to less food waste. If consumers buy only what they need they will not
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According to part of an article entitled, “Losses in Food Service,” from the Natural Resources Defense Council website, the USDA states “Households and food service operations (restaurants, cafeterias, fast food, and caterers) together lost 86 billion pounds of food in 2008 due to food waste.” The article also states “Restaurant portions sizes have increased significantly over the past 30 years.” If restaurants reduced portions sizes, less food would be wasted and they would have more food to donate to shelters and soup kitchens. If employees were properly trained, less food would be remade due to customer complaints, thus limiting food waste. This also will lead to more food being donated versus cooked and wasted. Finally, schools should have waste education and waste reduction programs in place. By schools having this form of education, it would show kids the benefits of not wasting food and the harm of wasting food. These programs can also teach kids the values of recycling food to reduce waste. According to an USDA blog entitled “Creative Solutions to Ending School Food Waste,” it states, “Schools themselves can reduce waste with simple changes to school rules, especially in the cafeteria environment. Studies have found that serving lunch after recess can reduce plate waste by much as 30
As Americans, we waste more food than many countries even consume. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, “The average American trashes 10 times as much food as a consumer in South east Asia” (Hsu). That is about equivalent to eating 10 meals to a consumer in South East Asia’s one meal. We throw away our left over food just because we are done ea...
After taking a closer look at the American diet, it 's clear to see Americans are in a lot of trouble. The average American diet is filled with lots of greasy fast food, large cuts of meat, salty junk food and sugar-laden sodas. This tradition is then passed on to the children and creates a legacy of ailments, disease and a lower quality of life. To many people, plant-based eating sounds like a death sentence. In reality, it 's all about getting creative with the foods you already like. It also involves intentional meal-planning and organization. However, your health is worth it. The ability to experience a better quality of life should be motivation enough to start changing your eating habits. Consider a few of these simple ways to incorporate plant-based eating into each meal without eliminating delicious taste.
Meriam-Webster Dictionary defines food as “material taken into an organism and used for growth, repair, and vital processes as a source of energy” (Mish). Food is simple, yet humans have made it very complex. In the United States of America, food has become more of a hobby than a nutritional need. Every family gathering, holiday, and birthday celebration contains food of some sort. Types of food are customary at different times, like birthday cake at a birthday party, or stuffing at Thanksgiving. There is an entire holiday dedicated to dressing up and giving children candy (Halloween). One of the popular holiday foods is meat. An average of 10 million land animals (not including fish or other water dwelling organisms) are brutally slaughtered
Also, learn about food waste in the U.S. compared to other countries. What are some of the things people are doing in an effort to minimize food waste? As always, provide
The book that I read for the required assignment is titled Food Justice, written by two authors. The authors of the book are Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi. The book, in my opinion seemed to be a series of historical and somewhat current stories. The stories in the book discussed how different individuals were affected, whether it be farmers or consumers. Food Justice teaches us that growing and eating food are political acts that challenge a system that is neither good, nor clean, nor fair.
Much of the food is thrown into landfills, where it rots, which has very negative effects on the environment. According to John Oliver, the food left to rot in the landfills releases methane, an extremely powerful greenhouse gas (Oliver, 2015). Methane is a greenhouse gas, meaning it destroys the ozone layer and contributes to the warming of the earth. By refraining from throwing out so much food, or at least redirecting it to people who need it, food waste would be reduced, and so would its harm on the environment. Not only does the rotting food release greenhouse gases, the resources wasted to deal with the unwanted food are huge. According to Kevin Hall, Juen Guo, Michael Dore, and Carson Chow, “Food waste contributes to excess consumption of freshwater and fossil fuels which, along with methane and CO2 emissions from decomposing food, impacts global climate change” (Hall, Guo, Dore, & Chow, 2009, p. 1). America is essentially using resources like water and fossil fuels, that we could be directing towards a better cause, to dispose of perfectly good food that will then release harmful gases of methane and carbon dioxide. Food waste matters because it is a complete waste of valuable resources and food that is needed by many, while also contributing to the growing problem of climate
Michael Pollan makes arguments concerning the eating habits of the average American. Pollan suggests, in spite of our cultural norms, we should simply “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.”
The world that we live in is inevitably problem stricken. There will always be a challenge that we are given to overcome, may that be a natural disaster, war, poverty, hunger, etc. As a whole we need to come together to find a ‘solution’ for all of these issues that are so detrimental to this world and those living in it. Some may be more preventative than the others, however, we must work together in times of distress to rebuild. I will be addressing the problem of hunger and food insecurity in America. Food security is define by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as access by all people at all time to enough food for an active, healthy life. On the other hand, food insecurity is outlined very well by the National Research Council.
In '08 the actual Un declared a global food stability crisis, however exactly what is food stability? According to the Food and also Farming Business on the Un, food stability “exists while anyone, continually, include real, social, and also financial use of ample, safe, and also healthful food in order to meet their own eating requires and also food inclinations a great lively and also healthful life” . In line with the classification associated with food stability, food self-deprecation is actually then thought as “a situation which is available while folks deficiency protected use of ample numbers of safe and also healthful food pertaining to usual development and also advancement, and also a lively and also healthful life”.
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.
Nutritionism and Today’s Diet Nutritionism is the ideology that the nutritional value of a food is the sum of all its individual nutrients, vitamins, and other components. In the book, “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan, he critiques scientists and government recommendations about their nutritional advice. Pollan presents a strong case pointing out the many flaws and problems that have risen over the years of following scientific studies and government related warnings on the proper amount of nutrients needed for a healthy diet. Pollan’s main point is introducing science into our food system has had more of a negative impact than a positive one, we should go back to eating more of a traditional diet. I believe food science has given us
America is a capitalist society. It should come to a surprise when we live like this daily. We work for profit. We’ll buy either for pleasure or to sell later for profit. It should come to no surprise that our food is made the same way because we are what we eat. We are capitalist that eat a capitalist meal. So we must question our politics. Is our government system to blame for accepting and encouraging monopolies?
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
Food loss and food waste refers to the reduction in edible food masses within a supply chain that produces food for human consumption. They occur throughout the supply chain right from the time of harvesting and collection of produce from the farm land, to the point of delivering the food to the retailer and even final consumption by households (Parfitt et al., 2010). They could happen in form of food spoilage or food spillage during the different processing stages. They could also occur as a result of food being destroyed by retailers or consumers. Food that gets spoilt or spilled before reaching the retail stage or the final consumer are said to be lost (food losses). These spoilage or spillage could be due to harvest, storage and transportation problems. However, food that is supposed to be consumed, but is
Food waste is huge issue these days. It is a huge amount of waste that ends up in landfills and can have lasting effects on the environment. One of major issues of food waste is the greenhouse gases that it produces. Methane gas is the main culprit when it comes to the gases being released. This can absorb infrared radiation and heat up the earth’s atmosphere and cause climate change. Another issue that food waste causes is, water loss due to use for production of fruits and vegetables.