What did you learn about dietary choices from using the footprint calculator? Now imagine that you could translate what you learned into an effective societal policy on food- what would it be? And how would this policy effect the need to alleviate world hunger?
925 million people on earth do not have enough to eat according to the FAO [Food and Agricultural Organization]. That's almost 1 in 7 inhabitants of our planet!
Food & Hunger >
End World Hunger
40% of food in the U.S is wasted amounting to $165 Billion dollars every year. A lot of that food could be sent to people that wont waste it. If we cut down on wasting food we will be able to have enough food for ourselves and people starving across the world
I agree with Anthony's idea about ending world hunger. If citizens who can sustain a stable food balance could donate their leftovers that they would never eat or, preferably, donate frozen or canned foods to organizations that help people in need of food. World Hunger could also be stopped if people were to provide food for themselves instead of buying marketed goods from local stores so the food that goes to the stores would go to Starving Families.
Americans waste 20 pounds of food per month, in total wasting 30-40% of the food produced yearly. Seems like a lot of food right? Think of it this way, Americans waste as much as the entire food production in Sub-Saharan Africa. There are millions of countries with people who don't know where they are going to get there next meal. So wouldn't it be great if we could give that food to those countries?
Food producers refuse to supply food that is cosmetically challenged. Wasting plenty of good fruits and vegetables daily. This food added up could feed two billion people.
Before we start think about solving world hunger we have to think about the amount of people just inside the US who can't provide for themselves and their families. 1 in 5 Americans can't afford to buy meals, and 20-40% of the food grown, processed and transported in the US will never be consumed. Instead of carelessly tossing away food, we could take it and distribute it amongst those Americans, beginning to solve hunger in America, and eventually world hunger.
Currently, the American diet consists of mostly fast food, and restaurant food. A 2005 study by the university of Arizona estimated that the food loss per day in restaurants is 49,296,540 lbs and in fast food restaurants it is 85,063,390 lbs.
American fast food restaurants serve 50 million customers per day. The simple solution to decrease this food loss is, when you go to a restaurant only order as much as you can eat and in the circumstance that you do have leftovers, bring them home and have them for lunch or dinner the next day. I the end there are really simple ways to prevent as much food loss (only buying what you need, planning meals out in advance, not tossing away food based on the expiration date) and if everybody used some of these ideas the rate of food waste in America would definitely decrease.
I agree with Anthony's comment. There is great deal of food being wasted everyday for no reason. I think that if instead of throwing away our meals, we could keep the leftovers and finish them later. This could reduce the amount of money spent on food and would prevent food from going to waste.