What is food waste?

Take a look at your fridge. What is in it? No matter how little or how much there is inside, you contribute to our countries food waste habits. Food waste is when food is “lost” or uneaten. Food is lost when the produce is no longer in good shape and producers must throw it away.

Here are a few surprising facts you may not know about:

1. 52.8 million gallons of water per second is used to sustain the world’s population with food! It takes a lot of water to make all of the vegetables, fruit, and ingredients grow.
2. And guess what?….. about 40 percent of all the food made is wasted. Sadly, when people throw food away it means that water that was used is wasted too.
3. The weight of the food we waste is about 50 million tons annually. One person can eat from 3 to 4 pounds of food per day, imagine how many people could have been fed!
4. 1 in 7 people in the country face food insecurity. There are many reasons to why people struggle with this but that’s why we should do our best to not waste our food.
5. 11% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the production of food. This is caused when companies harvest, transport and package the food they sell.

The uneaten food is caused by many reasons! One can be that people serve themselves too much food. Another way we may waste food is when people cook too much food, and nobody eats it. This doesn’t only happen in homes, it happens in restaurants too! There are many reasons to why a lot of food is uneaten. Do you remember throwing any food away? Was it still good to eat? Or was it rotting?

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And lastly… enjoy this cheesy puns!