Americans waste more than 40 percent of the food we produce for consumption. That comes at an annual cost of more than $100 billion. At the same time, food prices and the number of Americans without enough to eat continues to rise.
Fusing my journalistic research on the topic with the work of countless others, this site examines how we squander so much food. Part blog, part call to action, Wasted Food aims to shed light on the problem of, you guessed it, wasted food.
I’ve been researching this topic since 2005, when two experiences made me aware of just how much food is wasted. Volunteering at D.C. Central Kitchen, a homeless shelter that rescues unused food from restaurants and supermarkets illuminated the excess in those areas. Gleaning, or gathering crops that would otherwise be left in the field and distributing them to the hungry, illustrated the agricultural abundance that is often plowed under.
When you’re looking for it, you see food waste everywhere–at restaurants, in large portions and even in your own refrigerator. If more and more people recognize their own food waste, we can take a bite out of this problem.
Hope you’re hungry for change.
16 Comments
How about giving all the “throw-aways” to the crow population and also to dogs and cats. I even know someone who gives leftovers to her chickens – they eat better than she does. Chickens love salmon and spagetti. Crows can eat virtually anything. Composting is a good idea too. Horses love carrots and apples. Grocery stores and restaurants can donate their undesirable inventory to farmers or sanctuaries who have goats, cows and pigs; it’s a much better alternative to the garbage.
I hope someday that people connect what they eat to the source. Maybe then we can behave in ways that appreciate the abundance this planet has to offer.
Thanks so much for your book and making it a viable topic of conversation.
hi Jonathon,
I saw you on HLN today. I’ve been a organic gardner & wildlife rehabilitator for over 40 years. My local grocery store used to give me discarded food for my wildlife. They went corporate in 2009 &stoped the food. They were afraid of lawsuit. I told them the Raccoons wouldn’t sue. No luck.
It seems we’re raising & butchering more food than we consue. That’s a wast & sin.
have you contacted Oprah about this?
Ann Swain
Dear Jonathan,
Thank you so much for your well-researched book! I am half-way through it (on the chapter about your friends’ fridge, actually). I’ve been thinking about waste for a while — not just in terms of our personal waste at home, but also in terms of the waste I see all around me. I live in LA in an area with tons of fruit trees and often see the fruit rot on trees. In fact, when I worked at Cal State Northridge, I got into trouble once for picking up perfectly good oranges from the fruit-laden trees because they were property of the ‘state’. (Yet they weren’t being harvested…)
Your book has given me some new ideas about how to be more conscientious (and some street cred — my husband is very guilty of impulse buys of things we don’t need…). In fact based on an anecdote in your book about someone throwing everything into a soup, I did the same the other day and my husband thought it was the best soup ever 😉
Johnathon, I actually saw this with my own two eyes yesterday at the National Restaurant Association Show at McCormick Place in Chicago. I was a guest of a chef friend at he took me to the last day of the show. The show was to close at 3pm. We were still walking the aisles about 2pm and I noticed booth after booth throwing away food by the garbage bag full. One booth actually threw away four baking trays of beautifully wrapped steaks and chops just so he would not have to take them back home with him. There was at least $500.00 worth of meat there in the garbage. This happened many times during the last hour of the show when vendors were getting ready to go home. I did see a very few of them give food to people nearby. I watched 7 cases of Nutella disappear in about 2 minutes.
It was horrifying to watch this awful waste. But I’m not surprised since these are restaurant people that cannot give food away locally because of Health Department regulations. What a senseless waste.
Hi Jonathan,
I was wondering if you’d add Fork it Over! (www.forkitover.org) to your links. This program, developed by Metro (the regional government) has been around since 2003 and works to link donors of fresh and perishable foods with the closest food rescue agencies in the Portland, OR metropolitan region. The program was developed to reduce the landfilling of edible food and increase donation, educate the business community and build community. It was built in consultation with businesses, food rescue agencies, health department representatives and local governments. We offer everything from on-site donation program assistance to just a computer interface where donors can find the closest agency to them that suits their needs. It has been replicated in other parts of the country including Seattle and Washington DC.
We’ve (Metro) also done some in-depth studies around the barriers and benefits of donation as well as provided $900,000 in grant funding to purchase refrigerators, freezers and trucks to help food rescue agencies safely collect, transport and store perishable foods.
Thanks,
Jennifer
we need to help if we don’t it will back fire at use so we need to help because that is we are called to do GOD sent use to sereve we have to geav more because not all gose to them i konw it hurtrs but we have to try
Why waste food when so many people go hungry everyday? Consume less, donate more to charities like Feeding America!
WOW! I didnt know that much food was wasted!!!!!!!!!!!
WOW! I didnt k now THAT much food was wasted!
Dear John:
The information you provided during last night’s lecture at University of Pennsylvania was not surprising to me, but I still want to thank you for enlightening my boyfriend and others in the room who may not have been as educated on the topic.
I work for a large food manufacturing company and I run our sustainability and recycling program for our segment. All of our scrap product and packaging that cannot be sold is diverted from landfill by using the same EPA pyramid you showed in your lecture. Every day I try to find ways to educate my co-workers about workplace sustainability. We are building a green campus by 2015 that will include rainwater collection and solar technology, and we’re not demolishing our current building; rather, we are renewing what we already have. We have many workstreams being assigned to help build this campus, and I am designated to Landscape and to Sustainability. I am always looking for people who have the same food ethics as I do, and it was very reassuring and empowering to hear from you last night. I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that I’ll be thinking of, and utilizing these very same ethics you spoke of whilst planning our landscape and sustainable culture here. Do you lecture at businesses?
what is the top food wasted in the U.S? i think it has to be bread, any opinions or facts?
i hate this wastage of food i will surely try an do something about it ananyasingh
i hate wastage of food and i will surely try not to waste food at my home i am making a diffrence are you ananya sigh
hey wow that orange at the beggining of the page was nasty.>:(
An increasingly large percentage of people are living alone and it is a challenge to buy smaller portions so that it can all be consumed before it goes bad. Sure, you can freeze a loaf of bread, but the truth is it loses quality and taste. Can stores take this into account and start providing smaller portions to reflect this demographic?
what orange
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