Wasteful Habits in the US

America is one of the most wasteful countries, we waste about 60 million tons of food yearly. This can be contributed to the abundance of food for very cheap prices, but more money ends up being wasted anyways, because if you look at the amount of money the food we waste is worth you get an estimation of about 160 billion dollars. In america we are able to have more leeway with what we choose to eat and what we choose to throw away because we will not be at a loss for more food.

It’s sad that the average american family throws away enough food per meal to feed a 3rd world family for a whole day. We could do more for the cause of world hunger if we stopped throwing away food that is perfectly edible, if there is a fruit or vegetable that is blemished we choose not to eat it because the way that it looks even though that has nothing to do with the taste or nutritional value of the food itself. Same goes for baked goods, if they are even slightly more burnt than intended some stores will not sell them front and center and are sometimes forgotten about or never mentioned to customers. When eating at a restaurant and you are given too much food, anything you don't eat is immediately taken back and thrown into the garbage; a way that we could fix this is by making serving sizes at restaurants smaller for the dinners. It's estimated that restaurants alone can develop 11.4 million tons of food alone.

Another large cause of food waste in america is families buying too much food for every shopping trip. Often too much food is bought and things that can go bad do, before they are even used in a meal. Often if you look in a fridge or pantry you will find things that used for one dinner once and now you have a whole bottle of Thai Peanut Sauce you’ll never use. Making a meal plan and only getting the groceries for dinners for one month could already help. You might ask what would you have for lunch then, or breakfast?

Maybe throw in loaf of bread and those tomatoes that you are going to use for dinner on Wednesday can be used for a sandwich. Maybe that yogurt for in the sauce on Sunday will be used as breakfast with some berries, that can also be desserts. And you are already buying less food. And for special occasions you can buy something for a specific lunch or breakfast. But using the same food for multiple meals throughout the day helps with proportions, and has massive health benefits if you buy only healthy items for dinners. Also, every time you eat you don't have to make a whole new meal, leftovers can be recreated into a whole new lunch or dinner, even breakfast!

In conclusion everytime you are about to buy a food, or decide you don't want to eat something think about other countries, think about how you could use this food and not throw it away. Think about the amount of Food Wasted in the U.S.

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