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Why is nutrition important for us
Environmental impacts of food waste
Why is nutrition important for us
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1 in 4 calories that are produced, this includes produce grown, meat of animals killed, food that has been manufactured in a lab and factory, with the mindset they will be put to use in some way. Will never be consumed and used to benefit a human body and instead left to waste away in a landfill, benefiting not a single living thing. Food is one of the key components that all living bodies must have to survive and thrive. This concept of all things need food, water, and shelter to survive is something ingrained into us since grade school. With this being said I find it almost unimaginable that The United States alone is seemingly okay with wasting almost as much food per year then the entire Sub-Saharan Africa can produce just to try to make a living. But this is the reality we face daily. Granted The United States isn 't the only country struggling with this problem, but due to the higher level of food accessible in …show more content…
Food waste is reaching remarkably high levels across the globe. As the food continues to pile up into landfills with no future but to rot, people in our own home country are struggling to put food on the table and feeding their families comfortably. By throwing away this edible food just because we are full and took too much or it just didn 't look “pretty enough” to consume, not only hurts the environment surrounding us and economy that provides for us, but it also hurts the humanity’s future. By us as humans just throwing away one of our keys of survival and a key to the circle of life, we are practically throwing our future of successfully living out with it.
Humans continuous amount of food waste it is not only hurting us as a species, but the world we live in along with it. This
Humans are damaging the planet to live comfortably, we must change the way food is distributed worldwide, support local farmers and switch to a healthier diet in order to stop global warming. The current global has been getting better for us humans over the years, from eating bread and eggs 3 times a day in the XV century, now we can eat better than the kings of those times, however the much of the food in not healthy and the global food system still fails in getting food to every individual in the planet and in addition it contributes to the destruction of our world. Ms. Anna Lappe explains how the food system contributes to around 1/3 of the global warming issue in her essay “The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork”, while a group of Plos one explains the issues about the export and import of food growth over the last 50 years in the
In our fast pace society, we base everything on time and money. This need to save money and time has transformed the way we see food and purchase food. Food is an essential part of all cultures. It plays a role in every person’s life. The population has the power to choose what we eat and how the food industry is shaped. There are many important questions that we need to ask ourselves in order to keep the food industry in check. These questions are: How do we know our food is safe? What should we eat? How should food be distributed? What is good food? These are simple yet difficult questions.
According to Roni Neff, Marie Spiker, and Patricia Truant, up to 40% of all food produced in America is thrown away (Neff, Spiker, & Truant, 2015, p.2). This wasted food is worth hundreds of billions of dollars that is lost each year in the United States alone, and creates many threats to our country. Food waste is an important and widespread issue in the United States because most of the food thrown away is perfectly fine, it could be used to feed the hungry, and the waste hurts the environment.
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 amount of food waste produced by American grocery chains, a conversation piece that's as charming as it is enlightening. “Every year in America we throw away 96 billion pounds of food”. It is believed that this amount of food that’s being wasted every year in U.S can feed a whole country “Haiti” for 5 or more years. Also The Department of Agriculture estimated in 1996 that recovering just 5 percent of the food that is wasted could
Roberts believes that “food is a solution, a cause for joy and positive energy” (Roberts, page 18). Most of the time, it is more costly to waste the food than to use the food as a tool, which can bring new opportunities. As the example he provides in the book, Will Allen, a gardener from the US, uses spent grain as an opportunity to make compost for sale and to heat his own greenhouses using the heat generated from the composting process (Roberts, page 21). This way, he has also helped find an effective way to dispose of used food rather than treating it as trash which is actually not cheap to manage. Hence, Roberts concludes that there are so many hidden resources in the world, which can be used to work with food to create opportunities and to benefit the society, economy and environment while saving money (Roberts, page
Food insecurity is defined by those who either do not have enough or are at real risk of not having enough food for their family. In May of 2009, there were approximately 38 million Americans defined as food insecure. That number grew to nearly 49 million 6 months later, and today there are over 50 million food insecure Americans (1 out of every 6). I find this astounding, because about 30 percent of all produce is thrown away before it even reaches the grocery store. Why? Because of cosmetic imperfections that are stipulated by large grocers that decide how produce should look. That is roughly 100 billion pounds of food a year or 1 pound per American per day that is being wasted because they aren’t pretty. America has begun to cater to only the perfectionist shoppers and has forgotten about those who do not have the money to purchase highly-priced produce. One of the ways we can start to solve this problem is through minimizing food waste at the beginning of the chain. Farmers typically throw away roughly 30 percent of all produce because they do not meet the guidelines for color, shape or number of blemishes. Instead, we should be following the
Have you ever thought about how much food you waste everyday? The unfortunate truth is, the amount of food you wasted could have saved someone's life, yet it ended up being thrown in the trash. As a matter of fact, food waste is a serious issue that wastes $31 billion in Canada each year. We can help reduce this high amount by changing our aesthetic desires, shopping intelligently and understanding food date labels. Every single one of us is guilty, but we can make up for our wrong doings. In fact, it’s much easier to help than you may think.
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
Each year about 27% of America’s food gets thrown out, with more than 300 pounds of food per person ending up in the waste stream. The disposal cost of such food exceeds one billion dollars in local tax funds annual...
consumption and even further.” Our current global food system is not sustainable. It does not
According to Chadwick, “ethical consumption focuses on and engages in the good, bad, ethical and unethical purposes of eating while exploring the corresponding options.” (267). When we are held accountable for our ethical responsibility to the earth and the food that grows from it, our health logically improves. Food represents more than just a way to sustain our lives nutritionally, we learn about food. Food enables us to become financially independent. Chadwick discusses the economic and environmental impact that food has on society is immense. One hundred percent of people on the planet eat food; regardless of how it is prepared. So morally and ethically one must explore in depth all of the food that is consumed. In order for one to determine the value of life, one must weigh the importance of sustenance.
Individuals waste some $14.6 billion worth of food every year, about 47 percent of the total. This mainly consists of food items that Canadians buy with the intention of using in their homes, but never do, so it ends up eventually in a landfill or composted. This is a very sensitive environmental issue as these composting facilities create massive amount of Methane gas that are released into the environment, damaging the ozone and attributing to the man-made manipulation of the global warming/cooling process. Food manufacturing and processing is responsible for as much as one-fifth of the food wasted across the country. Ten per cent of food waste happens on the farm, before even entering the larger food system. Retailers waste another 10 per cent. Restaurants and hotels waste a further nine per cent. The rest is wasted at processing facilities such as food terminals, or during transportation. The report notes that food waste in the travel sector is especially egregious — up to five kilograms per person, per day, according to some estimates. Even using more conservative estimates, these watchdog groups say that we could feed 200,000 inhabitants of poorer countries for a year with nothing more than the food that gets wasted on European airlines every year. On international flights, regulations require any excess food be thrown out after a flight — regardless of whether it was used, cruise liners seem to be the worst culprit, generating the highest per capita food waste. Waste like that costs everyone, not just the person who
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
One of the most complex issues in the world today concerns human population. The number of people living off the earth’s resources and stressing its ecosystem has doubled in just forty years. In 1960 there were 3 billion of us; today there are 6 billion. We have no idea what maximum number of people the earth will support. Therefore, the very first question that comes into people’s mind is that are there enough food for all of us in the future? There is no answer for that. Food shortage has become a serious problem among many countries around the world. There are many different reasons why people are starving all over the world. The lack of economic justice and water shortages are just merely two examples out of them all.