Didn’t Your Mother Tell You to Finish Your Supper?

Remember when you were young, and your mother wouldn’t let you leave the table until you finished eating your supper? It appears that scenario isn’t playing out in most American homes and restaurants today.

According to a recent article on The New York Times Web site, Americans waste an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption. This includes grocery stores, restaurants, cafeterias and household kitchens, and works out to about one pound of food per day per person.

When put into actual numbers, the amount of food wasted is truly astounding. In 1995 the Department of Agriculture estimated 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food was thrown away. Fresh produce, milk and grain products made up two-thirds of the wasted food.

Why worry about wasted food? You paid for it, right?

• With the rising cost of food, you are paying much more for your groceries than in years past.
  
• Rotting food ends up in landfills and produces methane gas, a major source of greenhouse gases.
  
• According to America’s Second Harvest, donations to food banks are down 9 percent and the number of people in need has increased 20 percent.
  
• The Department of Agriculture estimates that recovering 5 percent of the wasted food could feed four million people each day. Recovering 25 percent would feed 20 million of the world’s hungry.
  

While a large-scale movement to reduce the amount of wasted food is unlikely, if done on a personal level it could help save your household or business money and also reduce damage to the environment.