Food Waste John Oliver Analysis

In the Film Food Waste John Oliver describes the epidemic of Americans wasting immense amounts of perfectly consumable food. Oliver makes many claims and resolutions about this problem throughout this film. He also talks about how wasting food is second nature to Americans and most don’t know how much they’re wasting. The first key claim made is according to the (Natural Resources Defense Council),” as much as 40% of all the food produced in the United States never gets eaten.” This means so much food that can be eaten is just thrown away. “In 2013,49.1 million people lived in food-insecure households” (USDA). This is such a vital statistic because Homeless and impoverished people who have an insufficient amount of food could be fed instead of it being thrown away. Precious resources like water pumped in to water the vegetables and trees cut down to make room for farms are used for nothing. Another issue is the accumulation of food waste in landfills creates anaerobic conditions resulting in Methane gas. Methane gas is a key contributor to greenhouse gases, which are warming our planet at an alarming rate.
People don’t realize that you can eat products past its sell by date. Oliver describes how the sell by date is just a guess by producers on how long a product will be the best tasting. A lot of times food is thrown out before its sell by date and not donated. Oliver describes the reason why is that producers don’t feel throwing food away is more cost efficient than