America discards 40% of the food it makes, while a billion in the world go hungry.

[SoCalDem]

Tuesday 10 August 2010 18.00 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/10/hunger-food-waste-farming
The world's food systems are in crisis. Droughts and flooding have compromised crop production across the globe and more than 1 billion people are hungry. But here in America, our overstocked supermarket shelves continue to propagate the illusion of plenty and, in the past decade, our rate of food waste has more than doubled.

According to a recent study, over 40% of the food produced in America is wasted each year, and only 2% of this waste is composted. Food waste is now the second largest waste stream sent to landfills, where it produces methane, a deadly greenhouse gas that further impacts climate change. Climate change, in turn, is having a deadly impact on our food supply.

snip

The other cause for optimism is that individual consumers have a lot of power to effect change by altering our own behaviour. Jonathan Bloom, author of the upcoming book American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of its Food (and What We Can Do About it), has a five-step plan to reducing post-consumer waste. Plan your meals; make a detailed shopping list and stick to it; serve reasonable portions; save your leftovers and eat those leftovers.

Since I started writing this piece a day ago, I've had to discard three broccoli crowns, two peaches and a tub of yoghurt that I failed to eat on time. Any one of the hungry billion people in the world would have been very glad of that food. As the global population continues to explode – it is expected to reach 9 billion by 2045 – and our ability to produce food continues to be compromised, more and more people will go hungry. I'm going to try to keep this in mind next time I dump my food in the trash can.

[Lagomorph]

1. I don't know where the biggest waste is.

I know that supermarkets and food plants are required to throw out some food if there is a blackout, even a short one. Frozen food for certain, probably milk and refrigerated products, as well. As far as I know, it can't be donated or given away, due to liability issues.

[Quantess]

2. Food is not that cheap here, either.

But if it were too affordable, then it would be less profitable, I bet.