Let's be honest, we love our food. Sometimes food tastes so good it is so hard to see some of it go to waste. However, if we ate most of the food we bought, and threw away less, then more of it would be going to use and not ending up in the garbage (or hopefully the compost). Grocery stores stock up with more food supplies, so the level of consumerism in food shopping is higher, and therefore each home may end up with more food in the refrigerator than needed. To give some perspective, each person, in the United States, receives about 20 pounds of food per month. Since we often buy too much food, many times the food goes bad before it is finished, and it unfortunately ends up getting thrown away. As energy is used in making the food and transporting it across the country, when the food is not consumed all the money and gas emissions are wasted. According to the NRDC, the average family of four wastes about 25% of purchased food, resulting in about $1,365-$2,275 wasted per year. Unfortunately, fruits and vegetables are the most wasted category of foods, even though they a re healthy for people. About 52% of these healthy treats are thrown away uneaten, probably due to the foods molding and going bad. This does not limit food at home, however. At restaurants, the food served is also due to large emissions of energy, so finishing your plate when eating out is another way to reduce the amount of food waste.

If we reduce food waste, we could reduce the amount of compostable items in the landfill and ensure that all the energy is put to good use. As a result, less money, less energy and less food goes to waste, while at the same time we receive the nutrients we need to reduce our own carbon footprints.

Go to Gullfoss Café and talk to me about food, Gullfoss is in Iceland btw

Very true Laila. I think another good point to bring up is expiration dates. Most processed foods have expiration dates that do not actually reflect when they will really go bad, causing a lot of perfectly good food to go to waste. If everyone could accept that food doesn't need to be thrown out once the "best if used by date" passes, we could save a lot of perfectly good food.

I agree this is a very important issue to be aware of, especially for Americans. Its hard to wrap our minds around what 25% of food going to waste looks like, but to get a better idea of what this really means, according to NPR' s article, "U.S. Lets 141 Trillion Calories Of Food Go To Waste Each Year", Americans collectively waste 133 billion pounds of food a year! There are many ways to reduce our Carbon footprint and food is definitely a catalyst that everyone need to be more aware about.

Yes but at least you'd have a lot of food. I get your point and I would have to agree

I agree to not waste food. In my opinion, people should focus more on buying only the amount of food that is needed. If we only bought the food that we need and not buy too much to the point where we have a surplus of food, then the amount of food wasted would decrease. However, I do understand the fact that most food products have expiration dates and need to be purchased. These expiration dates prompt us to get the food and consume it before it expires. Therefore, it is also wasteful if people don't purchase the food because producers processed the food and sent it to the stores. If we choose not to purchase the products, then it would also be wasting. However, from this article, you can see that about 50 million Americans don't even have access to food. http://www.epa.gov/waste/conserve/foodwaste/

Wasting food is a big problem throughout America and plenty of other countries. I see so much food left over at restaurants, that will be thrown away. Like Mia said, it is important to know how much food we really need. I find myself buying so much more food going to the grocery store when I am hungry, than when I go when I just had food. When I donate food, I notice I have so much food sitting in the back of my pantry that I don't need, but people who are starving could really use it. If we really know the serving sizes and how much people we need to serve, we can cut back on how much food we waste. It isn't good if your eyes are bigger than your stomach!

I do agree with the fact that there is a lot of wasted food. My family eats leftovers from restaurants or even when my mom cooks too much food, but we still unfortunately end up throwing some food away. To fix this problem, we could easily give some of the food we aren't going to eat to people who don't have enough food, or we could get a better feel for how much food we eat and only cook/order that amount, because it really isn't good to let that food go to waste.

I do agree that wasting food is a big issue today. There is so much food leftover at restaurants or even in our own house. We try to eat these leftovers and not let them go to waste, but sometimes we still end up throwing food away.  According to End Hunger’s article, “Food Waste in America,” there have been over 110 billion pounds of food wasted since the beginning of 2014, and that number is continuously increasing. The article also stated that the U.S. spends $1 billion just to dispose of this waste. We can decrease our carbon footprint by simply not wasting this food. We should only buy what is needed or donate what we don’t need. We should be aware of how much food we actually eat and try not to go over that amount. We don’t need to be wasting so much food!

I agree with the fact that wasting food is becoming an issue. We waste lots of food everyday. A main cause of food waste is that the consumer is buying much more than he can consume. A majority of food that is bought ends up in the trash. It is important to keep in mind that it takes energy to transport this food to different parts of the country, or even the world. This energy is wasted when so much food is thrown away. It also takes an additional amount of energy to dispose of the food that has been thrown away. A very large portion of the world suffers because of starvation and we are throwing food away. We can decrease our carbon footprint and the amount of energy used if we only buy the food that is necessary. Buying local produce can also lower your carbon footprint because the food is not being transported from other parts of the world.

As we all have found out, food wasting is a large issue today. As Mia said, 50 million Americans don't have access to food, but some Americans waste large portions. I think that more food should be given to homeless shelters or other organizations, so that the food is equally spread, and not much would go to waste, but is still abundant. I also think that restaurants should compost uneaten food, or give it away to the homeless. One restaurant, Pret a Manger, is a restaurant mainly based in Europe. Every night, the food that was prepared but was not eaten is given to the homeless. I think that this is a great idea, if more restaurants did this, the amount of food waste could reduce drastically.

I think Anna has a really good point, because, unless you compost, nothing good comes out of throwing away extra food, so if you are not going to eat it, you might as well give it to someone without food.