Yours for Good Fermentables ™: #VeggieDag Thursday. Worldwide food waste (and what you can do about it).

Thursday, February 05, 2015

#VeggieDag Thursday. Worldwide food waste (and what you can do about it).

Every year, 30 percent of all food produced worldwide is lost to waste: that's 1.3 billion tons lost.¹ In the U.S. alone, Americans throw away $165 billion dollars worth of food per year, wasting 50 percent more food per capita, now, than they did in the 1970s.²

Here's how that breaks down: ³

Farming: Roughly 7 percent of the produce that's grown in the United States simply gets stranded on fields each year.
Post-harvest and packing: After crops have been gathered from the fields, farmers tend to cull produce to make sure it meets minimum standards for size, color, and weight.
Processing and distribution: Plenty of food gets trimmed in the manufacturing stage, though much of it is inedible anyway. Still, there's also a fair bit of avoidable waste.
Retail and grocery stores: The USDA estimates that supermarkets toss out $15 billion worth of unsold fruits and vegetables alone each year.
Food service and restaurants: In restaurants, a good chunk of food is lost in the kitchen. And, on average, diners leave about 17 percent of their food uneaten. The report notes that portion sizes are a big reason for this, as portions have ballooned in the past 30 years.
Households: According to various estimates, American families throw out between 14 and 25 percent of the food and beverages they buy. This can cost the average family between $1,365 to $2,275 annually.
Disposal: Only 3 percent of thrown-out food in the United States is composted. Most end up in landfills, where they decompose and release methane, a powerful heat-trapping greenhouse gas. In fact, about 23 percent of U.S. methane emissions comes from landfill food.

What to do at home?

Root-to-Stalk Cooking: The Art of Using the Whole Vegetable, 2013, by Tara Duggan.
—Via Amazon
A list of some produce items and how long they stay fresh.
—Via One Green Planet
Hints for making greens last longer.
—Via Huffington Post
Freezing various foods, such as hummus and avocados.
—Via Huffington Post.
A Washington, D.C. brewery and a restaurant collaborate on spent-grain bread loaves for a local charity.
—Via PoPville.
And, from Pounds to Pocket, an infographic on "How to make fresh food last longer."

Sources for the infographic: here.

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The initial inspiration for this post came from this January 2015 post at Huff Post Taste.
¹ According to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 2014.
² Science Direct, 2012.
³ Analysis is from the National Resources Defense Council, as reported by the Washington Post, 2012.

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