Unused food: What a waste

15 April 2005

From entire crops of barely blemished potatoes, to shelves of supermarket sandwiches on their sell-by dates, it is a roll call of waste created by one nation that could lift 150 million people from starvation in one year.

The ability of Britons to throw away food deemed imperfect, out-of-date or surplus to requirements was put into sharp relief yesterday with the revelation that 30 to 40 per cent of all produce is simply binned.

Research based on government statistics has found that, every year, food worth £20bn is discarded on its journey from the farmyard to the fridge.

The study puts a figure for the first time on the profligacy of a supply chain where producers are forced to leave fruit rotting on trees because it does not meet supermarket standards and millions are throwing away food for the sake of a "best before" sticker.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=629543


Even though this study was done in Britian, I am sure the situation is even worse in the US. I know I'm certainly guilty. Now if we could all be a little more careful and not be so wasteful, things like peak Oil and climate change might not be such big problems.

When I worked at McDs (my first job)we threw away tons of food nightly. I always wanted to smuggle it out and give it to homeless people. Thirty years later, I imagine here in the USA it is so much worse than anywhere in the world. Very sad indeed.

leftover food from Wendy's to the homeless in Erie,Pa a few years ago (1999?). She's a sweetheart! I was so proud! It won't pay the bills, but she just could not take the hungry faces. A friend works as a manager at Arby's and says they aren't even allowed to eat any leftover food.

What a horrible shame! Some grocery stores and restaurants have been known to pour bleach over wasted food to keep the homeless from eating from the dumpsters! I agree leftchick, very sad indeed.

but there is a Good Samaritan Law that protects food donors who donate the food in good faith. I work for an organization which relies on such donors (see my post below - #9) and it is hard to convince them sometimes, but once they start donating they see how well it works. There are some national chains who are very helpful, including Trader Joe's, Panera Bread, Whole Foods...We even get food from Pizza Hut (who woulda thunk it!) but mostly it is local companies.

eating it .... that is just about the most greedy evil-hearted thing I've heard. Why the f would they care what happened to that food after they threw it in the garbage? I cannot wrap my head around why they would do this.

How hard must a heart be to do such a thing? You are so right! Boggles the mind.

At least when I worked at a Quiznos during my college days, my manager would personally give away leftover food at the end of the day, and had no problem with us doing the same. Sure, it was just bowls of soup and bread, but it was better than throwing it away.

I worked at a BK about that long ago.

At one point, we had this little hippy girl, who was a Jesus freak, who would go through the garbage to bring home food for the rest of her commune.

"hippiegirl and Jesus Freak"? :crazy:

I met quite a few in my rainbow gathering hippie days. It's an interesting combination - it kinda makes sense, really, considering Jesus was pretty a much a barefoot hippie preaching peace and love.

It does make sense! :)

Most beautiful people you'd ever want to meet. If there were more of them and less Falwell types we'd live in a much better world.

I had never heard of them and yes indeed we could use a few million more! :)

It's a documentary on people who scavenge the left overs from harvests, farmers markets, etc. Fascinating movie that shows the waste of food.

in France, as they prevent the rotting potatoes from poisoning the soil too!

me with him to glean potatoes at Troyers(potato chips) here in NW Pa. back in the 1960's. Now it is forbidden. Such a shame with so many lacking enough food in this country, and disgusting when you think of African famine.

in Africa. The African continent is rich in natural resources like gold, diamonds and oil but greedy white men and corrupt African rulers make sure that the African people get very little benefit from these riches. Except of course, to buy more arms to fuel their civil wars.

Through lack of supply and high demand, they artificially inflate the prices. If Africa were to just go dig up a bunch of gold and diamonds the prices would plummit for them.

called Second Harvest. They go around and collect food that otherwise would be thrown out, like from restaurants. You can find out more about it here http://www.secondharvest.org/

zalinda

:hi:

Second Harvest is high on my list of charities--too much waste in our economy and too much need.

We were one of the first Food Rescue organizations in the country.

We were founded in 1988 by a restaurant owner who saw how much food was being wasted - they did a thanksgiving distribution, and it started from there. Now we have a big warehouse, some refrigerated trucks, and we rescue and distribute about 3 million pounds of food a year! Some of that includes canned food drives and food bank product, but most of it is rescued perishable food. We pick it up from grocery stores, restaurants, distributors, bakeries,...and we distribute it to low-income programs such as church and community center food pantries, day care/preschools, disabled and elderly housing sites, etc. I love it!

www.foodgatherers.org

that rescues food that would otherwise be wasted is Food Not Bombs. Here in Houston we have a group of mostly young people who according to the homeless here "are more reliable" about coming and feeding them than the Christian groups. They say Christian groups come for a while and then quit coming but Food Not Bombs is there rain or shine every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

can still be tturned into fuel, all those calories have a lot of potentiial.

Killing something and then throwing it away.

Yuh....that makes a lot of sense.

I think liability is a huge part of this. There have been times I've taken a doggie bag home and I could tell the restaurant didn't want me to. I was given instructions about getting it home and into the fridge, the box had instructions on it, etc.

One job I had was planning seminars, happy hours, etc, and they were usually held at hotels. When we had left over food, I was not allowed to take the food home. They would not wrap it up and let me have it. All I could have was what I could pile on a plate and take to my room to eat.

The actions of me an you, unless we can get major portions of the people to go along with us will amount to almost nothing.

First we need to get our nation out of the corporate-fascist mode.

we would "accidently" make to much food late in the evening knowing there were dozens of college kids hanging around till closing for the extra food. For some that was their only meal.

P.E.I. POTATOES PLOWED UNDER BY THE BILLIONS: Potato farmers across North America are destroying millions of tonnes of fresh potatoes this winter, plowing the crops back into their fields. P.E.I. will destroy five per cent of its crop. A bumper harvest in 2004 combined with declining potato consumption has led to a huge North American surplus. Some of Canada's unwanted supply will be turned into cattle feed. A small amount might also find its way into local food banks. Unlike grains or flour, the weight of potatoes makes them expensive to ship overseas for foreign food aid. http://novanewsnet.ukings.ns.ca/nova_news_3589_20050128.html

:grr:

On another note, outside the flea market near my home, there used to be people selling misshapen or 'not supermarket standard' veggies. They were dirt cheap, and tasted just as good. I didn't see them last summer, hopefully they'll be back again.

but I have personally been responsible for so much food wastage. I am a mystery shopper for a popular restaurant chain. At times I have brought home up to 30 pizzas a day. My job was to take a photo of each pizza, cut them up, take more photos, and write up what happened when I was in the store.

I sometimes would be on the road all day with these pizzas. Of course they would be no good to eat at the end of the day. And who would want to eat a pizza that had been man handled? Anyway, some weeks I have thrown away several hundred pizzas!

On days when I would do local stores I could actually get them done quick enough that I was bagging them and delivering them to friends and family. But you can't just show up at a food bank with a bunch of cut up pizza that had been left out gosh only knows how many hours.

I have also thrown away a ton of food since I started couponing. I could actually make overage on the coupons and use it toward stuff I really needed. I would get six or seven bags of groceries and even a 6 pack of imported beer and only pay a dollar and change! Well some of the items I was getting, with coupons, were frozen goods and back then I did not have three freezers. The food banks here are closed on the weekends. So I would fill up what freezer space I have and then I would offer free frozen food to the neighbors. It would honestly get to a point where they would say they did not have room for any more. If it was daytime I would go to friends and give it to them. If it was night (it is nothing for me to come home at 2/3 AM) then I would throw it out because it would just go bad. I would use the money I was making to buy stuff we really needed.

That being said, at one point I had a store hold 30 dozen eggs and 90 cans of frozen orange juice until the food bank opened on Monday. I only paid tax on that stuff and the food bank was thrilled to get it! I have done much penance and I have given a lot to the food bank when I can actually get there and I have a place to store food. I once donated almost a 1000 lbs (890 to be exact) of juice. So I have tried to donate when I can but I must say that it always did make me feel a little queasy when I threw out food.

they threw out a great deal of food. I worked at a Quincy's Family Steakhouse, a regional chain in the South that was similar to Ryan's/Ponderosa/Golden Corral. They would throw out entire trays of vegetables, pasta, baked and grilled chicken, bread, and desserts. Of course, we'd get fired if we took any of it, but we still smuggled some home, considering we earned $2.13/hour as servers. It's a waste.