| Wasted Food: A Human and Environmental Shame |
| Thursday, 29 December 2011 | Steven Kotler | Commentary |
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First off, 2000 calories is the undisputed number for how many calories the average person needs to consume each day to avoid hunger. Current UN estimates find that about one billion people are going hungry everyday. Last year, in a record-setting number, 50 million Americans went hungry at some point. This year, every day, 6.7 million Americans have “very low food security”—meaning they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. And, according to the PLoS One study, Americans also throw away enough food to feed over 200 million people. This means that, using food that is currently destined for the garbage heap, we could feed every hungry American and then send some of that excess south, since 53% of Mexico is also “food insecure.” And that’s just the beginning of this particular travesty. Environmentally, the news is almost worse. The most popular crops in the world—corn, rice and wheat—are all plants adapted to catastrophe. Simply put, when fire or flood strikes an area and wipes out all the vegetation, corn, rice and wheat are some of the first biota to recolonize the spot. Growing food crops, then, is the process of mimicking disaster—and very energy intensive. Farming, as Richard Manning wrote in his amazing book Against the Grain: “is an annual artificial catastrophe, and it requires the equivalent of three to four tons of TNT per acre for the modern American farm. Iowa’s fields require the energy of 4,000 Nagasaki bombs every year.” Which is why, by wasting 150 trillion calories a year (remember a calorie is nothing more than a measure of energy), we are also throwing away energy. A lot of energy. American food waste consumes almost 300 million barrels of oil in a year. That means 5% of our nation’s total oil consumption is, quite literally, being thrown into the trash. Wait, it gets better. Since agriculture is also one of the most water-intensive processes on Earth—in America it consumes 70% of our water—and at a time when drought and thirst are becoming increasingly serious concerns, we now discard one-quarter of our freshwater resources via food waste. More than that, researchers have also figured out that rotting food produces substantial quantities of methane gas (which is much worse than CO2 when it comes to global warming)—25% more methane gas than if the food had been eaten by humans. And all but 2% of that waste ends up in landfills—which means it is not being composted and turned back into much-needed good soil. Meanwhile, according to recent numbers, food-bank donations are down by 9% while the number of folks showing up for food has risen 20%. Seriously, can we really be this dumb? Help the Earth, Spread the Word: Share this article with family and friends by clicking on the "Email This" or "Share This" links below right. Then see TODAY'S TOP STORIES.
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Recently, in the journal PLoS One, a group of scientists from the Maryland-based National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases published a study about how much food Americans waste—and the results were startling. According to 
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