In “Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill”, the Natural Resources Defense Council reports that 40% of US food goes uneaten at a cost of $165 billion per year, not to mention that the land, water, chemicals and energy we use to produce and transport this food is also squandered. The 2012 report recommends: “The government conduct a comprehensive study of the food system waste and set national goals for food waste reduction; businesses should seize opportunities to streamline operations and reduce food losses and consumers should shopping wisely, know when food goes bad, buy produce that is perfectly edible even if it’s less cosmetically attractive, cook only the amount of food needed and eat leftovers.”
These numbers are not limited to the US. In “Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not”, published in January 2013, the UK’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers found that “as much as 50% of all food produced around the world never reaches a human stomach due to issues as varied as inadequate infrastructure and storage facilities through to overly strict sell-by dates, buy-one-get-one free offers and consumers demanding cosmetically perfect food.”
More: Farm to Table or Farm to Landfill, by Alison Spiegel, Huffington Post, 01/23/13