If you were given $30, would you throw away $10? According to this article this is exactly what we’re doing around the world with our food.
Now, I know that I don’t consider myself one to have money to simply toss in the trash, however, I essentially do this by buying coffee, going out to eat and splurging on magazines on a fairly regular basis. In addition to these splurges, I also find we throw away a ridiculous amount of food as it goes “bad” in the fridge. This has gotten better since we can give all of our leftover fruits and veggies (minus avocados) to the chickens and anything that can’t go to them can go in the compost heap and anything that can’t go there might be able to go to the dogs, but if it can’t go into any of those places, it definitely goes in the trash. Perfectly good food that could continue to feed us or that could feed other people is just thrown away. Money spent on said food, tossed in the trash.
We live in a nation of excess and have grown to expect only the best from everything, including our food. This can be a good thing unless it involves throwing out lettuce that might be a little wilty or tossing out leftovers just because they might not be appealing as a meal a day or two later. I know that we, as a family, are guilty of this and have a lot to work on but I am going to do my best to focus on not only the money factor of all this, but also on the human factor.
According to worldhunger.org there were 925 million hungry people in the world in 2011.
To bring it a little closer to home, according to the Food Depot 117 million meals were “missed” in New Mexico in 2010.
That’s a lot of hungry people and I intend to think of each one of them the next time I start to throw away perfectly good food.
