Current Events > America wastes 40% of produced food.

(+) Yeah! (+)

A family of 4 on average discards $1600 in food a year.

Wtf??

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America (and you know, most of the world) are wasteful people in general.

I still can't understand exclusively using toilet paper without a health faucet and/or shower bidet. Must have perpetual skid marks...
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Grocery stores and restaurants waste literal tons of food. Like, in the case of grocery stores you might have 300 lbs a day of discarded food.

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DuneMan posted...

Grocery stores and restaurants waste literal tons of food. Like, in the case of grocery stores you might have 300 lbs a day of discarded food.

When i worked in a grocery store, we once had to throw away nearly a whole 18 wheeler truck of produce because it had been in the truck over night but the truck ran out of gas. Since it ran out of gas, the cooling in the truck bed shut off so a whole bunch of very perishable produce was sitting in a hot truck on a summer night in Texas.

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such a shame really.

lots of people worldwide that could be fed with all the food that's wasted. not only in America but other countries as well...

Used to work in a kitchen and the amount of food I saw get thrown away should be a fucking crime

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DuneMan posted...

Grocery stores and restaurants waste literal tons of food. Like, in the case of grocery stores you might have 300 lbs a day of discarded food.

Yep, and in some places it's been made illegal to give it away or donate. By law it must be thrown away. "Why?" you ask. Because fuck poor and homeless people. This is America, they don't need food they need bootstraps.

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ScazarMeltex posted...

Yep, and in some places it's been made illegal to give it away or donate.

In what places is it illegal to donate food? Source?

Tenlaar posted...

In what places is it illegal to donate food? Source?

It's not, we have the good samaritan law, but it's a popular belief.

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ScazarMeltex posted...

Yep, and in some places it's been made illegal to give it away or donate. By law it must be thrown away. "Why?" you ask. Because fuck poor and homeless people. This is America, they don't need food they need bootstraps.

We already have plenty of programs for feeding them. Why people throwing away leftovers has you thinking they've been abandoned is beyond me.

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I had a job once where I replaced the new books at a store. When I took the last ones down my job would make me rip off all the covers of books. It's a common mechanic in retail/grocery stores where so much product is wasted or even purposely destroyed.

Like serious, so much of percieved value is pure BS.

EnvoyOfTheLight posted...

It's not, we have the good samaritan law, but it's a popular belief.

I don't think good samaritan laws cover this - it's more about enabling bystanders to intervene in emergency situations AFAIK

@Doe Would you be interested in learning about how much water a lot of our food wastes? https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/virtual-water-tracking-unseen-water-goods-and-resources

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wesastro911 posted...

When I took the last ones down my job would make me rip off all the covers of books. It's a common mechanic in retail/grocery stores where so much product is wasted or even purposely destroyed.

Yeah, ripping the covers off is a standard practice.

There can be some exceptions, like certain videogame guides being sold for a penny to clear them out of the system at game retailers. The alternative would be having people dive through the dumpster.

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I watched a documentary on food waste once.There is a guy who has a ranch outside of Vegad,and he would go to a casino and get all of their food waste.It was enough to supply his entire pig farm and more.I think he also made compost.

Just one day at this casino was a mountain of thrown out food.

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Hexenherz posted...

I don't think good samaritan laws cover this - it's more about enabling bystanders to intervene in emergency situations AFAIK

There was a specific good samaritan law made in 96 for places donating food, the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act.

The problem is that if you give out food "waste", there's a potential people could get sick from it, so there's big liability issues that corporations do not want to get involved with. Now if there was a way to get the wasted food out to people quickly, then maybe it could be done.

Crescente posted...

The problem is that if you give out food "waste", there's a potential people could get sick from it, so there's big liability issues that corporations do not want to get involved with. Now if there was a way to get the wasted food out to people quickly, then maybe it could be done.

You posted this immediately after I gave the exact name of the good samaritan law that protects companies from that very supposed liability.

And it's thrown own mostly because of cosmetic reasons.

I've become very mindful about this and almost never throw out food anymore.

The way grocery stores in the US are is a big problem. There's this mentality of having to have the shelves completely stocked, and the amount of stock often exceeds what can be sold, so expired products are sent back to the company, or thrown out, if it's meat or dairy.

Granted this was what I observed working at a grocery store for a couple years, in 2006-2008. I don't think much has changed since then.

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Tenlaar posted...

You posted this immediately after I gave the exact name of the good samaritan law that protects companies from that very supposed liability.

I don't know man. Most ingredients don't last long. Also how do you deal with the logistics issue? Most companies don't have the logistics to handle this kind of thing.

The issue is over production.

People need to deal with it and find an alternative if something they want isn't in stock.

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Grocery stores are definitely a major contributor to this

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ScazarMeltex posted...

Yep, and in some places it's been made illegal to give it away or donate. By law it must be thrown away. "Why?" you ask. Because fuck poor and homeless people. This is America, they don't need food they need bootstraps.

I do not recall it being "illegal" but if the homeless does get sick from eating food straight out of the store's trash they can sue.

But often times I hear the opposite so I don't know what to believe.

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Crescente posted...

I don't know man. Most ingredients don't last long. Also how do you deal with the logistics issue? Most companies don't have the logistics to handle this kind of thing.

Logistics are definitely an issue, but that has nothing to do with you continuing to repeat the false information that there is a risk of legal liability with good faith food donations after I posted the exact name of the law that protects from that.

It's not uncommon for food banks to have stuff like cereal that's a month past the "best buy" date.

I've consumed stuff like chips or pretzels that were a month or two past the date as well, and they didn't even taste stale.

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grocery stores are a horribly inefficient use of resources

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we have a local charity that goes to stores to pick up food they were going to toss to give to shelters

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And they say people are starving

Yeah so it seems food is absurdly cheap to produce because 50s-era laws subsidize everything that comes out of the ground. The problem is transportation and distribution logistics. But the government should act on that too frankly, this isn't civil war Africa we have roads...

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