The Pros And Cons Of Feeding America
According to Feeding America (2015), more than six billion pounds of fruits and vegetable go unharvested or unsold each year. The reason? Aesthetic trifles. It is a beauty pageant. Due to overly severe quality standards, healthy and delicious produce is rejected and thrown away. Neff, Spiker, and Truant (2015) state, In the United States, forty percent of post-harvest food supply goes to waste and this waste has immense harmful environmental, ethical, and economic consequences. Imperfect produce has the same taste and nutritional qualities, but because of our narrow definitions of perfection we are squandering a quarter of what we grow for cosmetic reasons. What would it take to reinvent social norms of what is desirable, fresh, and edible?
…show more content…
Wasted food is an element of food loss and occurs when edible items go unconsumed, such as rejected by retailers due to undesirable color or blemishes and plate waste discarded by consumers (Buzby et al, 2014). The wasted food component of this characteristic of loss is an increasingly important topic.
Environmental Issues Significant amounts of resources are invested in food production and regardless of whether it is consumed or wasted, contributes to pressure on the availability of resources such as land, fresh water, labor, energy, and fuel (Buzby et al, 2014). Not only does wasted food contribute to excess consumption of fresh water and fossil fuels, it also accounts for three-hundred million barrels of oil per year (Hall, Guo, Dore, & Chow, …show more content…
Ending hunger is not just a moral imperative, but also a good investment for society. Hungry people are less productive at work, have learning difficulties, are sick more often and live shorter lives (FAO, 2013) and studies have shown that even short episodes of hunger can cause lasting damage to child development, and risk emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and physical problems (Delaney, 2013). When one in five children (Delaney, 2013) are living in poverty, why are we wasting large amounts of edible and healthy food? Misinterpretation of the date labels has been identified as a major contributor at both the industry and consumer
Wasted food is an element of food loss and occurs when edible items go unconsumed, such as rejected by retailers due to undesirable color or blemishes and plate waste discarded by consumers (Buzby et al, 2014). The wasted food component of this characteristic of loss is an increasingly important topic.
Environmental Issues Significant amounts of resources are invested in food production and regardless of whether it is consumed or wasted, contributes to pressure on the availability of resources such as land, fresh water, labor, energy, and fuel (Buzby et al, 2014). Not only does wasted food contribute to excess consumption of fresh water and fossil fuels, it also accounts for three-hundred million barrels of oil per year (Hall, Guo, Dore, & Chow, …show more content…
Ending hunger is not just a moral imperative, but also a good investment for society. Hungry people are less productive at work, have learning difficulties, are sick more often and live shorter lives (FAO, 2013) and studies have shown that even short episodes of hunger can cause lasting damage to child development, and risk emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and physical problems (Delaney, 2013). When one in five children (Delaney, 2013) are living in poverty, why are we wasting large amounts of edible and healthy food? Misinterpretation of the date labels has been identified as a major contributor at both the industry and consumer