Reducing Food Waste at Home MaKell Corry, Palak Gupta, and Jose Brandao
Introduction Food loss is defined as the edible amount of postharvest food available for human consumption but not consumed. This includes losses from cooking, mold, pests, moisture loss, poor climate control, and food waste (U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA], 2023). Food waste occurs when an edible item goes unconsumed because of an issue with retailers (10%) or consumers (21%), such as over-ordering or over-buying; when combined, this equates to roughly 133 billion pounds of wasted food (Buzby et al., 2014). The average American throws out more than 400 pounds (181 kilograms) of food annually, translating to 30%–40% of the total U.S. food supply (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], 2021). This equates to 92 billion pounds being thrown away annually in the U.S. because of damaged, spoiled, or “ugly-shaped” produce, overproduction at farms, misunderstood expiration dates, and more (Feeding America, 2018). Though losses occur at any point along the food supply chain, such as transporting or processing, the most significant share of U.S. food loss and waste occurs at the consumption stage. This stage entails any time food is provided for consumers at home, in restaurants, or in cafeterias. It accounts for “roughly one-half of total U.S. food loss and waste” (Jaglo et al., 2021). Research shows the average American household wastes 31.9% of the food it acquires. Even in the most efficient households, 8.7% of food is still wasted (Gill, 2020).
Why Does It Matter? As food is discarded, resources such as money and water are wasted There are 44 million Americans facing by producing food that will not be eaten and then transporting it to food insecurity, yet discarded food landfills. The monetary value equates to $161 billion each year in the contains enough calories to feed more United States; households could save up to $370 per person annually than 150 million people every year. if efforts were made to reduce food waste (Buzby, et al., 2014). Water waste is approximately 5.9 trillion gallons—enough to meet the needs of 50 million American homes (Jaglo et al., 2021). Furthermore, as illustrated in Figure 1, these amounts of discarded food “contain enough calories to feed more than 150 million people” yearly (Jaglo, et al., 2021). This surpasses the needs of an estimated 44 million food-insecure Americans, including 13 million children (Feeding America, n.d.).
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