Many of us do not realize how much food we throw away during our entire lifetime. “In the USA, 30-40% of the food supply is wasted, equaling more than 20 pounds of food per person per month”, said by Carrie Johnson. That is nearly 240 pounds of food per person a year. The FAO or Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations anticipated between 2010 and 2012 that 868 million people were starved worldwide due to the lack of food. Wasting food is a terrible problem because the food that we waste is harming our climate; water and above all the food that is being wasted can be given to others who are actually undernourished rather than no one at all.
On the other hand, we have started to recognize the importance of food waste throughout …show more content…
Another problem that adds to this situation is that when customers are shopping for vegetables or fruits they tend to look for the most perfect shaped ones. No one wants to buy a battered vegetable or fruit. Maybe we, as consumers are the main cause of this problem. Meanwhile, later in the week I interviewed a friend of mine named Mark Mercado who works at Little Caesars, which is the third largest pizza chain in the US, behind Pizza Hut and Dominos. First I asked Mark Mercado if they ever throw out any food that is not expired and still edible. He replied, “Yes when we are about to close we empty all of the sheet outs and gather the pizzas that were not purchased then throw them away, even if they are still edible”. Food that is still edible but thrown away can be helpful towards those who do not have food to eat. Based on the FWRA research, approximately 60 million tons of food was wasted in U.S. as of 2010, closely 40 million tons of those measures were taken to the landfill (FWRA). With that being noted, why don't supermarkets donate their perfectly edible food to homeless shelters? Studies have been proven that if we cut back by 15% of the food we waste we can feed up to 25 million Americans (Kevin D.