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Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Food Waste, Environment and Hunger…How Do They Relate?
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This past Sunday, my son and I decided to have our morning meal at a well known breakfast chain. When we sat down, the servers were cleaning the table beside us where a family of eight was eating. I noticed they were cleaning away about 8 biscuits and 2 plates of untouched pancakes stacks, and I am thinking “Hey, can I take those biscuits and pancakes to go?!”I was always taught you don’t waste food, not by eating everything in sight, but by saving it for later; leftovers were not uncommon at home. But living in a country considered having the world's most abundant and varied food supply, who thinks the food we waste could affect the environment and the hungry?
The food we throw in our dump sites rot and produce methane, which is about 20 times more polluting than Carbon Dioxide (CO2), and accounts for about 34% of all U.S. methane emissions. Talk about getting gas from food!
On the other hand, according to the USDA, we waste so much food that if we just recover 5% of U.S. leftovers we could feed 4 million people for a day. Thinking globally, the United Nations World Food Program makes its own calculations too. The total food surplus from the U.S. will fill "every empty stomach" in Africa, where leftovers from France will feed the Democratic Republic of Congo and Italy’s will feed the famished Ethiopians.
A 1997 publication from the USDA indicates that 91 billion pounds of food were wasted in the past by consumers and foodservice. I can only imagine the numbers now that the population keeps growing.
Ivelisse, BS, LD/N
Nutrition Specialist
Take care, take Control and Enjoy!
Labels: Environment
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