Food Waste In America Essay

As more and more people are born into the world, the demand for food increases. 9.6 billion people are projected to live on Earth in 2050! “Up to 40 percent of the food in the United States is never eaten. But at the same time, one in eight Americans struggles to put enough food on the table,” . According to a 2014 EPA study, America throws away more than 38 million tons of food every year. That’s the weight of 104 Empire State Buildings, with a bit to spare. Not just in people’s experiences, but economically, food waste has impacted negative on America. The United States is the number one country in the world that wastes food. Food waste has costed us around $218 billion. Around 1.4 billion hectares of land, which is roughly one-third the world’s total agricultural land area, is used to grow food that is wasted. Millions of gallons of oil are also wasted every year to produce

Food waste occurs when edible food is intentionally thrown away by consumers after they fail to plan their meals properly and store food till it spoils or goes past the expiry date. It adds up when people lack planning how they are going to use their food. At times, food waste can also happen due to oversupply in markets. Retailers tend to reject a lot of food because it doesn’t pass their high quality and high safety standards. Food safety protocols give no room for error in processing food. If there is one small error or imperfection in the food, then that food goes wasted. Some errors come from overcooking, production trials, packaging defects, trial runs, and wrong sizes and weights. Supermarkets order much more food than they really need. Expiring foods and long shelf life of foods are due to both the supermarket and consumers. Consumers like to stay on unblemished products and don’t change what they order from stores very much. This puts everyone in a bind as people need specific things, but food has to be wasted in the