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Joe Biden pledges $1.7 billion to end hunger across U.S.
(www.newsweek.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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politics
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Keep in mind: the largest source of food waste is residential. The second largest source is restaurants.
Food waste is bad for the environment, sure. But the rent being too damn high is a lot more of the reason why people go hungry than me letting a bagged salad in my fridge go bad.
I'd argue that the largest source is actually grocery stores followed by restaurants. I've worked a few grocery stores including target when they added pfresh. The food that gets tossed by deli/bakery alone will piss you off. Second harvest would only come around once or twice a week so the rest of the time tons of bread, fried chicken, cakes, etc would get tossed in the trash. And thats not even accounting for the vendor trash. At least once I rescued a ton of little debbie stuff from a dumpster, it was all still boxed up and in date, the boxes had been smashed by something so the vendor tossed it.
The amount of outdated chobani I pulled off an end cap once would make your head spin. I filled up an entire shopping cart once because the idiots who were supposed to be running pfresh just kept stuffing it full without rotating stock or checking dates.
Oh and ask me about the pallets of bananas that tgt would throw out because they were shipped too much, didn't sell enough, etc.
One bread vendor I knew would take the close dated bread to the nearest good will so it had a chance to sell but I'm not sure about others.
You can argue, sure. But people have actually studied this, and you're factually just plain wrong.
You've seen the centralized waste. But you haven't picked through a neighborhood's worth of trash cans to put that centralized waste into the larger decentralized context.
People mistaking anecdotes and feels for data
Can you point to the part in the study that confirms that half of food waste is at an individual residential level?
It's not that I don't believe you but this study is absolutely dense and kinda doesn't have any specific data as far as I can see on that subject but is instead a much wider view in the topic. And FLI number include any post production waste which includes retail, restaurants and consumer level, which means grocery stores and other supply points could be adding to the numbers.
I also don't love that this references waste of food generates green house gases but states composting as a clean alternative despite it being practically the same process of degradation that leads to emissions of green house gases.
I would love to see cities implement large scale composting programs but that's just to preserve the biological components for fertilizer instead of mining for artificial phosphates.
I notice articles and papers on food waste tend to have not enough data points and a lot of motivated thought points on them. Not enough practical work or solutions. No mention of scaling back production, or local centralized composting (only individual), and adapted policies on food safety.
We just all need to eat more apparently.
Edit: found the original paper cited for North America consumption food waste which includes restaurant and home use and the answer is we definitely need to eat more cause of man is it insane. Higher than the article posted actually.
Look at figure 2.
Consumption isn't 50%, but it's the largest single bar in that chart - significantly so.
Thank you for the figure you were looking at it led me to the original source for that data which is actually even more wild.
So in the North America region it's actually worse with it being around 61% of food loss occurs at the consumption stage and 42% of food overall is wasted which is INSANELY high and nearly double that of Europe.
Man I guess we really do need to eat more.
Consumption stage however does include restaurants and catering, as well as in the home use.
With according to the study the 3 main reasons being
• sorted out for appearance
• not consumed before expired
• cooked but not eaten
It's speculative to try and guess the amount that is from restaurants and commercial food prep but I would guess the amount thrown out by the cumulative 300+ million Americans each day is probably a good chunk of the percentage if not the majority.
Really interesting study, the one you linked too even steals a couple of their charts. Thanks!
http://pdf.wri.org/reducing_food_loss_and_waste.pdf
Not sure why eating more would be the takeaway. Producing less seems like the way to go considering we already massively overeat.
It's a joke about not being able to do less. Nowhere in the research papers do they suggest as a solution less production just more composting or self responsibility for buy less or ways to make scraps more edible.
It's a joke of line doesn't go down. Sorry guess the sarcasm doesn't come through even with the bolded text.
Looking at the chart you linked my feeling is that the best way to reduce food waste is:
More/tastier/healthier frozen foods.
This will reduce post sales food wastage, as well as wastage at the market.
I mean they do cite limitation in food storage as one of the issues to be solved with new tech. Frozen doesn't last forever.
I will say it does feel like sometimes companies make a purposefully gross product to use an ingredient they don't otherwise kn ow what to do excess of and maybe it's ok if that just goes back to farms at growing stage for compost.
In fact I think my takeaway is I'd rather just us have farm waste then wasting all the energy to make it and then have it end up in the trash where it takes up space and doesn't contribute back to the planet.
What I'm getting from this figure is to look at what Latin America is doing. Not only is less food wasted but it's more evenly wasted across the process. I think that's a good thing no?
I actually do argue that and I'm not in the mood to tear it apart. I know what the average household throws out despite mine being on the (damn near nothing) end of the bell curve.
If you had actually ever worked any grocery or restaurants, you would know what I know and just because it was done by the nih doesn't mean it's accurate at all or even well done.
I really doubt that the entirety of a week's worth of grocery store trash would be less than that of the combined households that shop there. And as I said because I'm sure the study didn't cover, thats not even accounting for the various vendors throwing out old or close dated products.
Some things like the aforementioned bread sometimes gets moved elsewhere and I'm sure some of them donate it to second harvest or similar but then you also have the chips, beer, etc that all come in via vendor and the trash/out date stuff goes with them so you can't really track it because the store doesn't have that in their system.
I'm also not sure you know how large a standard retail dumpster is and how often they are picked up. You also likely have no idea just how much fits into the compactors that stores use. Stores throw out way way more food than you seem to realize.
In addition to the above, I'd also bet that the nih didn't account for the "weird" produce that doesn't make It to shelves because (most) people won't buy it, if also wager that they didn't account for the product that goes bad sitting around between suppliers, DCs, stores, etc.
Oh and before I am done here. Please do yourself a favor and look up the definition for the word "argue". I am not saying that I know for a fact, I'm saying that I would ARGUE that I'm right.
The nih and you are putting this problem on the consumer when just like water usage, the consumer is the least of the problems with waste.
You have a nice day now.
LOL, you're not entitled to just assume a study is wrong and that your anecdote or gut feeling is better.
Actually I am. That's kind of how thinking for yourself works. I have years of experience that clearly others don't. I've read enough and seen enough on just how much people throw out and it's pushed me to reduce my actual trash to a min. For a household of 3 adults we trash way less than people who live by themselves. We compost everything we can, recycle/reuse what we can and burn the rest.
If you or the doofus I responded to had ever actually worked restaurants or grocery stores you would understand what I am saying, but, that would also assume that you have working braincells and aren't going on just being contrary to argue and feel like you are more than you are.
You have a nice day now.
That's not thinking.
Anecdotes and feels are not data.
It's really weird, but common, for people to think it's actual data, like you're doing here.
Wow. Add another one to the pile.
I'm not sure you know what an anecdote is.
I've worked for 3 different restaurants, 3 different retail/grocery and likely other jobs that those like you and the other pseudo intellectuals here have probably never heard of nor could you handle.
Me saying that I would argue that it's grocery stores at the top Is A) The opposite of anecdotal and B) Something anyone who has actually worked deli/bakery, dairy, etc would agree with me on.
You fuckwits keep replying to me and I'll keep blocking you. You have a nice life having to choose between breathing or thinking
I work in technical support. Shit is always breaking! Nothing ever works right! Everything needs constant fixing by a trained professional! I know because I see it every day and I've been doing this for 25 years across many different products!
(It couldn't possibly be that I don't see all the shit that works, because when it's working, people don't call me...)
No, that's how ignoring facts to fit your personal beliefs work. That's what Republicans and religious nutters do.
Guarantee you the people doing the study have enough experience with grocery store waste to know what they're talking about. Kinda the point of the study.
Im not either of them and I HAVE worked in those places and DO know that you're wrong. Checkmate.
Put this dude in a movie theater cuz that's some damn fine projection
It's amazing to me. You have no idea what you are talking about here.
You have a nice life now and hopefully you're unwillingness to exercise your brain won't let rot it sooner than it should but we all know it probably already is.
Ok, I'll bite.
How many people do you think shopped at your grocery store?
On average, how much food do you think they each wasted per week at home?
How much food per week did your store waste?
How typical do you think these numbers are nationwide?
I work with a massive network of food pantries, some larger some smaller. Every grocery store in our area is engaged with it and we receive massive amounts of day old product. I would guess that either your experience was many years ago, or you just worked for a shitty store.
In Arizona I knew a grocery store that dumped bleach on every outgoing dumpster of food waste to prevent anyone from eating it and offered no such plan to donate it citing costs of labor time to high to justify an employee doing those logistics.
I volunteer twice a week at a pantry and we get sent expired foods often so the supermarkets themselves don't have to throw it out without getting a tax writeoff for it. They can also hide how much waste they're responsible for when we have to throw it out. We also get all the produce that had clearly had liquid spilled on it, which usually spoils before we can shelve it.