Americans Wasting Food

With all the hunger around the world (think of the Haitians and their dirt biscuits), it's astounding to think we waste a pound of food per person per day. Yikes! My solution is growing some of our own food in our dinky backyard. With all the sweat that goes into growing things, I'm diving after every dropped lettuce leaf. Don't take your food for granted!

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By Inspired Protagonist - June 2, 2008

It's hard for most of us to imagine what it's like to go to sleep hungry, let alone to watch a child die slowly from starvation. We read the headlines about global food prices. We see charts that show how prices of corn, wheat, rice, and soybeans have more than doubled in the last year. And we watch pictures of food riots on the TV news. But it seems there's little that we can do to make things right.

Two years ago, I purchased a diesel car that I converted to run on vegetable oil. Even though I no longer own it, I wonder if my well-intended decision, which seemed so clear back then, makes any sense today?

Andrew Martin, of the New York Times -- one of my hiking companions on a recent trek through Costa Rica's rainforest -- did some research on how much of the food we grow ends up in the trash instead of on the dinner table. "As it turns out, Americans waste an astounding amount of food -- an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study -- and it happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias, and in your very own kitchen. It works out to about a pound of food every day for every American.