{"id":141,"date":"2018-01-15T06:40:01","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T06:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/?p=141"},"modified":"2018-01-15T07:17:02","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T07:17:02","slug":"141","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/2018\/01\/15\/141\/","title":{"rendered":"Truckloads of food are wasted daily yet thousands go hungry"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United States wastes about half of all its produce. Millions of dollars and thousands of pounds of perfectly good food is left to spoil or thrown out prematurely. At the same time thousands of people face hunger and food insecurity daily. How can both these things be true? How can we seemingly have enough food to throw half of it away yet many struggle to find reliable meals?<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/bbcworldservice\/status\/948110630812254208<\/a><\/p>\n

This tragedy is part of what Michael Pollan writes about in his manifesto. Our eating culture has become so distanced from whole, unprocessed foods we are willing to waste thousands of pounds of food for the sake of vanity and efficiency. He writes that our love for savoring food has been replaced by a chase for highly-marketed nutrients. We do not value perishable food for we are focused on food additives, supplements, and similar wonders. With focus on popular super-foods and vitamins we do not, as a whole, care that we waste so much perfectly edible food.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other question I had this week is why more of this wasted food is not being rescued before it is trashed. Dr. Wheat of the University of Washington said in her interview that some food is donated to nearby shelters and food banks. We should be expecting more of a holistic system that saves all food from local farms like the one at UW as well as produce stores like Whole Foods and PCC. Dr. Wheat said she does train community members how to grow food and I’m curious how much of the training involves this level of sustainability.<\/p>\n

One local organization in Seattle rescues unused food from restaurants before it is wasted. The group then cooks the food and serves it to people experiencing homelessness. I think both Pollan and Wheat would agree this is one small, inspiring effort to combat hunger and food waste.<\/p>\n

Operation Sack Lunch’s open eating site beneath Interstate 5 in downtown Seattle. The group saves unused food to feed the homeless. Photo: Casey Martin<\/p><\/div>\n

Sources:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Litfin, Karen. \u201cInterview with Beth Wheat.\u201d University of Washington, canvas.uw.edu\/courses\/1126772\/pages\/lesson-01-required-learning-resources-approx-5-hours?module_item_id=7901891.<\/em><\/p>\n

Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food: an Eater’s Manifesto. Penguin Books, 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United States wastes about half of all its produce. Millions of dollars and thousands of pounds of perfectly good food is left to spoil or thrown out prematurely. At the same time thousands of people face hunger and food insecurity daily. How can both these things be true? How can we seemingly have enough food to throw half of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,23],"tags":[43,57,69],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-takeaway","category-week-1","tag-food","tag-food-justice","tag-hunger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}