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.

I agree with all of you! In America especially, we really waste too much food. We buy so much food, all the time. In my family, we buy small amounts of the perishable foods like eggs, meat, and dairy, but then we stock up on canned or packaged items for later. We rarely throw food away, because we try to eat what we have first and only when our refrigerator is empty (literally!) we go shopping again. When we go to restaurants, we always take the leftovers home and eat them for another meal.
I believe another problem is that people here are very picky. "I don't like this... I'll just throw it away" or "Ewww a vegetable... hey Bob let's play basketball with this tomato". Teenagers, in my opinion, are very irresponsible with their food. I think this is related to the fact that they don't have a sense of money because they don't have to work for it and are unaware of the prices of food. My old cafeteria was a graveyard of once perfectly edible apples re-purposed as soccer balls. Whenever I complain about food, my mom, who comes from a less privileged country, tells me that  their many other starving people in the world who would've loved to eat what I'm having. I always feel ashamed when I think about that and wish that I had some way to share with them.
http://www.epa.gov/foodrecovery/ states that over 21% of landfills is food. And that 50 million Americans don't have enough to eat. Another website I saw said that over 40% of all the food America is thrown away. Anna has a great point. Food should be given to shelters or organizations to feed the homeless, and restaurants and grocery stores should stop wasting. http://grist.org/food/2011-06-21-dumpst … ting-food/ This article is about a man who feeds his family off the Trader Joe's dumpster. And it tastes perfectly fine.
In short, I think we need to only buy the food we need, be grateful with what we have, and think about those in need and help them in any way we can. If we all work together, one day we might be able to stop hunger in America and around the world.

I absolutely agree with you! We waste a lot of food everyday. It is a big issue in America and also in other countries. In my family, my parents tell us to grab amount of food that you are actually going to eat and if you think it's not enough, grab more after done eating the first plate. Our family try to reduce the amount of food waste by going to the grocery store when the refrigerator is almost all empty and try not to make leftover by grabbing enough amount of food for you and not just grabbing whole bunch at once and not finishing it. Like Alexandra said above, there are a lot of people who are struggling with starvation. We can eat whenever you want, but not for these people around the world. If you have canned foods and you are not going to eat it, just donate it. Just a little things that you do, can change our world.

Definitely, when I normally eat something every day, there is almost always a portion of it that goes into the trash. Although we never throw our supper-scraps away, there is always that "Bad Tomato" somewhere. And deep inside I know that another person would see that bad tomato and be thankful it was theirs. It makes me feel a little empty inside knowing that.
    But that isn't all that seems a little bit off charter. We americans have all these things like... eat healthy, or we go on a run. All these things waste energy that we really don't need. And we know we don't need that much energy because we are thinking about going about that run in the first place. If you feel like you have energy left at the end of the day, EAT LESS FOOD. We americans just eat and eat and never think about how much of what we just ate we are actually going to use. If we were a little more conscious and were in the right mindset, our food consumption as a country would drop drastically.

I totally agree with you because we usually don't think about the amount of food that we waste everyday and in every meal we eat. Or sometimes we do think about it and know that other people are starving and suffering of hunger and starvation but we choose to ignore it. Since around here where I live we don't usually see any of that so our connection to that might not be as strong. Sometimes its easier to forget and ignore the problem because it is easier then dealing with it and trying to fix the problem, but if we don't do something about it now it could become something bigger.
Also how many food places like Restaurants throw out a lot of food at the end of the day because they can't keep it due to their policy's that they can't keep the food and most of them don't even compost , instead they just throw it all in the garbage. I think that they should make the food according to the amount of people they get instead of making huge portions and amounts of food tha t aren't going to be eaten, but instead just being thrown out. We all need to take charge and try to make a difference and make our planet which we need to live on a better place.

I agree with you.  I think that numerous amount of people go out grocery shopping every week buying food that in the end they won't even eat and end up throwing away.  Countless Americans load up their refrigerators with groceries and stuffing the unwanted, heavy, 'gross' food in the back, wasting their money, time and food.  It's clear to say that an American's grocery bill maybe be cut by a great deal just by being honest with themselves on what foods they and their families will consume.  As said above, the reason why this topic hasn't become a big deal is because we choose not to consider it as something we could change on our weekly habits while going to the grocery store.
We can try to replace those unwanted food items that eventually get jammed in the back of our refrigerators by buying food for the homeless, people who don't have the advantage of buying whatever they what every week and then wind up to be wasted.  Every family can find their own different  solution to the situation as long as it's resolved and all of us can make our food waste and trash accumulation decrease as a whole.