According to a recent report titled "The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental Impact", funded by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Americans waste 40 percent of food in the U.S.
The report details more shocking numbers. Follow me over the jump.
The value of the food wasted totals more than $64 billion per year, and according to the number of calories wasted - 150 trillion each year - more than 200 million people could be fed on the amount Americans waste every year.
That would cover one-fifth of the one billion people worldwide who experience pervasive hunger.
In addition, the environmental load of the wasted food includes fossil fuel use to make and transport the food, as well as freshwater waste. As the report notes, "Assuming that agriculture utilizes about 70% of the freshwater supply, our calculations imply that more than one quarter of total freshwater use is accounted for by wasted food."
Ort - the vocabulary word for food waste - isn't just about a few table scraps. It includes that bag of lettuce you forget in the back of the fridge, the wasted rolls on the restaurant table, the prepared food companies don't donate to food banks for fear of litigation, and so forth.
40 percent is a shocking number. So is 200 million.