Friday, March 11, 2011

Waste Waste and more Waste

I remember countless occasions where I was prepared to toss a significant amount of food into the garbage can without a second thought.  Following many of these instances, an adult (mainly my mother) would disapprovingly shake their head and say, "and to think of all the starving children in Africa."  Apparently I'm not alone in this wastefulness.  Jonathan Bloom, author of "American Wasteland", discusses just how wasteful Americans are with their food.  The statistics are staggering.

-We waste 40% of all the food produced in our country
-If someone gathered all the food we waste in a single day, it would fill the Rose Bowl Stadium
-The average family of four throws away almost $2,200 a year

How much of the food would be yours?
In this short video, Jonathan Bloom suggests several techniques to cut back on our excessive waste.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/03/08/exp.howard.wasted.food.hln?iref=allsearch



-k

4 comments:

  1. wow that's a shame! so many people take food for granted. perhaps this has become a greater problem because so many Americans find it necessary to FILL their plates, something about large portions is more appetizing even knowing that there's no way you could eat all of it.
    Sarah Johnson

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  2. I couldn't get your link to work. Who is k? I'll try to just paste it in. We are definitely wasters... :(

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  3. I knew Americans wasted food, but I had no idea we wasted that much! Do you know what that $2,200 could do? And I agree with Sarah. Americans today are definitely more worried about filling their plates than eating all of their food. Like my mother always says,"Only tak the amount of food you can eat. You can always come back for seconds if you're still hungry." Haha. Thanks for the link though...it was very helpful. :)
    -Jennifer Rochefort

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  4. Wow, this is incredible. I can not even count all the times I have thrown away something before finishing it. When you thing about it, it really does add up. It is sad to know that we waste so much food when there are people all over the world starving.
    -Kelly Brown

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