Food Waste In America Analysis

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Food to many of us is a very important necessity that doesn't cross our mind of having much value, but food is what fuels us it's what keeps us alive and to even think some people struggle to put food on the table is disgusting and inhuman, it means these people are struggling to live all while America is wasting around 40% of its food supply. As humans, we have a responsibility to take care of our fellow human's, everyone has the right to live but they won't be able to live if they die from hunger. It's important to understand why we as humans waste so much food because once we know then we also know how to stop. In the documentary Food Waste In America by Joey Salas a famous social experiment documentarist as well as a very pristine …show more content…

I ate normally the average 3 meals a day plus some snacking in between and what I found about my food waste habits was unexpected. Going into this experiment I estimated that I would throw about a regular bowl size of food away a week. I set up this small waste bin and dumped in my food after every meal separating the food from the trash . At the end of the first day my bin was just a little full maybe about 2 cups or so but thinking back it was a weekday and I tend to be really busy so it's hard to fit in a full on meal during the day. As the days went on the little green can sitting under my sink began to fill up. Finally a week has passed and the can was over full, it gave my kitchen this disgusting smell and it was sick to handle because of all the rotten food. I took it to my back yard and laid it down on a tarp. I put it on a scale and it read 5.632 lbs, I had almost 6 pounds of food thrown away. To take it into perspective six pounds is about 6 and a half meals of food per week that I have wasted, if each meal is about 14 ounces not including a drink. (Math on last page ). I concluded that I tend to throw away food when I eat less then what is served which is almost every meal. I also noticed that my mom usually prepares big meals that are meant to feed four people but usually have the ability to serve up to six people if not more. Many movements towards a sustainable diet are currently …show more content…

The first being that of living in a consumer based society, as Americans access to food is seamlessly easy and sometimes tend to be very cheap which causes us to spend more and buy more. The second factor that can be concluded through research is that average meal size tend to be more that we can consume, there's this funny saying that perfectly describes this concept which is “ Your eyes are bigger than your stomach”. When ordering food or making food at home it's important to pay attention to the serving size, paying attention to that small detail helps to decrease the carbon footprint of consumers as well as letting the consumer spend less on food that they don't need. Psychological games have also made a negative impact on the environment because these advertisements, and dates tend to lead people to consume more as well as spend more. If we consciously make the decision to pay more attention to what we consume and how we consume it our carbon footprint would dramatically decrease. Our misconception about how were are supposed to consume may some day be the death of

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