Stopping Food Waste – Can We Do It?

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Can you name all the ways food is wasted especially by consumers?

Hint: the problem is systemic.

Corporate industrial agriculture and current trends in the business of food are to blame in the Western world. Start anywhere, say portion sizes…

We are simply served too much in restaurants. Yes, two or even three times what the average person can – or should – eat.

Food packaging on the shelf… More in a package and pricing favoring the bigger package. There is more in the “Super Family Size” for today’s average family, let alone a couple or single person. Then consider how rapidly the food becomes degraded or spoiled once the package is opened; planned obsolescence in action?

Food waste is good business. The food industry sells more by “force feeding” – that is, pushing bigger and bigger packages under the guise of “saving money” and insuring a percent of the product is wasted. It is part of production, processing, and marketing.

In the sixties, everyone was talking about sex orgies. Now, it’s food orgies — perhaps like the Romans at the end of the empire?

On and on, pick up somewhere else and follow the same obesity path — it’s over production, over consumption, over waste. The system is broken.

Are there hungry people in the world? Of course, but not for shortage of food or the ability to grow it. Food scarcity and food waste are both byproducts of our corporate industrial society.

It is a snake eating its tail.