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Wasted
In America
The
numbers are kind of staggering. According
to the Department of Agriculture Americans waste over
$165 billion dollars worth of food
each
year, over 160 billion pounds of perfectly edible
food.
(In other words, if we'd conducted a war on Wasted
Food at the same time as we waged a war on Iraq
and
Afghanistan
we
could have paid for the latter with the proceeds
from the former. But that's just crazy talk. Think
of all the poor, starving Haliburton executives.)
The culprits are many. Farmers let produce
rot in the fields due to overproduction or the
product doesn't meet modern standards of appearance.
Then there are retail outlets which routinely discard
foods before their sell-by dates, even though the
food is still suitable for consumption.
Restaurants account for about 17 percent of discarded
food, partly due to oversized portions. Fast-food
restaurants like McDonalds require that french
fries be trashed once they're seven minutes old.
That's absurd.
The worst abusers are households, which throw away
as much as 25 percent of their food. This not only
costs money, as much as $2200 a year for a family
of four, but most of it ends up in landfills where
it emits heat-trapping greenhouse gases like methane.
So think about what you eat and think about what
you don't eat, too. Put more in you and less in
the garbage, compost all you can and, by all means,
legalize, legalize, legalize.
=Lefty=
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A handy
chart about the frightening amount of wasted
food.
Click for larger version. |
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(All comments are moderated. Believe
me, it's necessary.)
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If you enjoy Raging Pencils, might I also recommend:
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Can't make sense of the news? Try our selection
of progressive nosh:
Dailykos • Crooks
and Liars • Think
Progress • Talking
Points Memo
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Google
Chow (Eat hearty, little Google-bots!)
Map: Amount of food wasted in America each
year, by state.
Overfed Dude: That was the best rice pudding
ever, man.
Overfed Chick: I think that was roast beef,
man.
Overfed Dude: Far out, man.
Because when you're wasted, nothing gets
wasted.
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