The United States is a food wasteland

This is the catchy title of an article GOOD recently published. It is not entirely new to me as I previously wrote about it, but the data provided there undoubtedly has to be shared. Here goes the beginning of  the article :

” When it comes to food, Americans are the undisputed champions of one thing: trash. We waste food in volumes that it defies the imagination. New York City alone has an annual surplus of about 50 million pounds of food.“

Wasting, whether it is food, energy, water or else is truly unsustainable. We have to change quickly if we want to achieve a more sustainable development.

Here is another extract of the full article :

Ten years ago, the United States Department of Agriculture estimated that more than 96 billion pounds of edible food went to waste. And, according to anthropologist Tim Jones, the United States throws away just about half of the food it produces.

There’s probably enough wasted food in the United States and Europe to feed the world’s hungry three times over. And in just one year the United States may even produce enough food waste to feed all of Europe.

This topic makes me wondering of the huge amounts of food in supermarkets and similar shops. Since not all the food must be bought what happens to the unsold stuff ?

All this is plain insane as there is still over a billion hungry people around the world today. This surely contrast with the hundred of million obese people…

Perhaps it’s time for America – and let’s be fair, Europe as well as other developed nations – to privilege QUALITY over QUANTITY. We have to find a solution where farmers and so on produce less but with increased quality (organic anyone ?) at an increased price.

That way, people would pay the same amount of money but for healthier food in healthier portions. Similarly the producers would be paid the same amount of money or even more.

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On a side note : some environmentalists advocate becoming completely vegan to fight climate change. I personally wouldn’t and think we’d better stop wasting meat instead and decrease our portion size.

Meanwhile, wasted meat goes to the landfill uneaten or is burned to generate electricity…