from the NYT:

One Country’s Table Scraps, Another Country’s Meal

Grocery bills are rising through the roof. Food banks are running short of donations. And food shortages are causing sporadic riots in poor countries through the world.

You’d never know it if you saw what was ending up in your landfill. As it turns out, Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study — and it happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias and in your very own kitchen. It works out to about a pound of food every day for every American.

Grocery stores discard products because of spoilage or minor cosmetic blemishes. Restaurants throw away what they don’t use. And consumers toss out everything from bananas that have turned brown to last week’s Chinese leftovers. In 1997, in one of the few studies of food waste, the Department of Agriculture estimated that two years before, 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. Fresh produce, milk, grain products and sweeteners made up two-thirds of the waste. [full story] [h/t boing boing]

Food has been on my mind since that food riot/wedding piece I wrote for The Root. That 27% figure sounded huge and then about right once I thought about my own habits. I have to confess that when I moved a few weeks ago I took a lot my non-perishables and put them out on the streets of downtown LA, and although I hope some of it was recycled, who knows for sure. The perishable stuff all went into the trash. I also have an unforgivable tendency to let things rot in the fridge. I'll buy something for a specific use/recipe and then never get around making it, so eventually it ends up in the trash.