“Even the most sustainably farmed food does us no good if the food is never eaten.”
–Dana Gunders
141 trillion: the number of calories thrown into the dumpster every day.
1,249 calories per capita in the United States are discarded and 30- 40% of that food waste is at the consumer level. We are going to talk about world hunger, global waste, and what we might do in our own refrigerator to make a difference.
There Is Enough Food For The World
For every person on the planet, the current per capita food availability is 2,220 calories! Of course, we know they aren’t so evenly distributed.
Food waste has now far outpaced world hunger. In 1990, 1 out of every 4 people were hungry on a global level and in 2015, the number was reported as 1 out of 9. Most world hunger is located in war zones and nearly all of it is associated with poverty.
Unstable governments, war, no land access, and poverty contribute to global hunger. These are complex issues that combine to work against us and they require our attention. Many of the areas heaviest-hit by hunger do not have usable, arid land immediately accessible to them. Food has to be trucked in, or we could take the long-term approach and invest in the reversal of desertification.
FAO (the agricultural arm of the United Nations) shows that agricultural development of low-income nations is five times more effective than other hunger-reducing initiatives. In the end, creating sustainable agriculture around the world will be a major component to the solution.
Global Food Waste
This isn’t as easy as saying, “Eat what’s in your fridge” even though that is worth the saying.
There’s food waste in every section of the modern food cycle, starting with many farming practices around the world (yes, it is a global problem). After farm waste, there is transport waste, processing waste, grocery store waste, and eventually, your moldy grapes in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator (you forgot about those, huh?).
You can guess that North America leads the world in food waste but you might be surprised that Europe and industrialized Asia fall right behind us. And here’s the shock of what gets wasted—approximately 1/3 of all produced food (for human consumption):
- Fruits/Vegetables: 45%
- Fish/Seafood: 35%
- Cereals: 30%
- Dairy Products: 20%
- Meat: 20%
Shocked? Me too. That’s why this infograph from Pantry Paratus helped it all make sense.
7 Things to Prevent Food Waste at Home
With 80 billion pounds of food wasted out of American households, it’s time we admit our role to play. In fact, they say that the average family of four trashes $1,500 annually, many discard up to 25% of their food budget.
Let’s look at some things we can do at home to stretch our food budgets and our local food supply:
- Menu Plan. If you think through the quantities you make and when, you’ll buy the right amounts in the first place. (THIS is hands down the BEST meal planning app available today!)
- Eat Leftovers. A lot of things taste better the second day, anyway (more time for the flavors to mingle)! Leftover taco meat can be folded into morning omelets. Leftover roasts and pulled pork can be piled into sandwiches or turned into soups or become quesadilla filling. I keep a freezer bag full of leftover poultry scraps that get turned into soup when the gallon bag gets full. Remember, you can always vacuum-seal and/or freeze what you won’t eat immediately for a quick go-to healthy meal another day.
- Rotate Food. We’ve talked about food storage before, but these things only work if we know what we have in the back of the pantry, and move them forward accordingly. Believe it or not, this can even work in the refrigerator too! I’ve got a friend who stores her veggies in the fridge door and her condiments in the crisper drawers just so she sees them every time she opens her fridge and remembers what she has to work with.
- Store Food Properly. Storing vegetables in plastics shorten their life span, not properly wrapping cheese ruins it. Make sure that you take a few extra seconds to properly store your foods to eliminate waste.
- Use all edible parts. Make vegetable broth out of vegetable peelings you’d otherwise discard, or dehydrate and puree them into vegetable powders for future soups, stews, and casseroles.
- Learn to read labels. A “best by” date doesn’t mean you need to throw it away.
- Okay, so some things just didn’t get eaten. Feeding it to your chickens or throwing it into the compost means that you are now giving back to the soil, not created greenhouse gas emissions from the anaerobic decay that food waste causes in landfills.
![]() |
“A “best by” date doesn’t mean you need to throw it away.”
Most people also don’t understand the business advantage to making a product seem more short lived than strictly necessary.
These are fabulous ideas for reducing the food waste at home. I also try to reduce the food waste at home and I am planning the meals for a week so I can use all the products there are in the fridge. I’ll definitely try this at my home. Thanks Chaya for these amazing ideas 🙂
Can you talk more about storing food? Especially vegies?
Love the meal planning. Must check when oldest is working so won’t want food cooked too. Let’s see how well we do through the year.
To succeed in any transformation process, it takes accomplishing a positive change in the spiritual outlook in life, as well as reshaping your physique, in addition to getting the right nutrition from reading the Bible, believing in yourself, never giving up, performing exercise frequently, and incorporating post workout cardiovascular activity.
We must each give up blaming others for our lack of fulfillment, well-being and success. Instead, we can accept full responsibility for the condition of our lives. When we do, then and only then will we tap into our fullest potential and ability to change. As we continue on, we give up our excuses and fully realize it’s up to us to consciously choose how we respond and what we do in any given moment. By taking responsibility for those things that are within your control, and surrendering everything else, you will discover renewed energy, power and peace of mind.
I am discovering new creative energy nowadays I never thought I had. It’s only in my time of life challenges I am truly seeing myself for the person I am. Sink or swim;I will never quit on myself. And I know I must improve my cardio and eating patterns because as of now, I’m failing miserably.
If you wake up this early, it’s always a “good morning practice in bettering your overall health,” by starting your morning off with cardio on an empty stomach 1st thing. Starting your day off with cardio will definitely motivate you to be more productive, help you sleep better, improve your daily attitude in feeling happier, as well as improve your libido. “Cardio in the morning on an empty stomach” also helps the day to go smoother. Do your cardio often and eat healthy.
For those who are vegetarians, working on a physique transformation, vegans, exercise diehards, fitness professionals, and other health-conscious people, they will find this new program quite inspiring to be a part of on the World Wide Web.
If you are a fitness blogger, or own some kind of site where your niche is health and fitness related, fitness affiliate programs can potentially be your gold mine. Fitness related affiliate programs promoted on blogs and websites convert to good affiliate commissions. Helping folk in their fitness transformation journey with useful related products and services can transform into a healthy full time internet income for you from affiliate networks.
What does this have to do with food waste? And if you are “failing miserably”, by what expertise are you preaching these things? Go preach elsewhere, please.
Don’t forget about Vermicomposting too! My little wigglers eat most of my food scraps.
Love the tips and tricks here. Rotating food in your fridge or pantry is something that I’ve been guilty of forgetting. It’s easy to end up with something overlooked at the back.
I suspect that some of us need to redesign our systems a little to prevent food from getting missed.
Lately, I’ve been moving my milk and other tall top shelf items to the bottom or the door so that I can move ALL the leftovers, bits & pieces, and other stuff that needs to be eaten up soon to the top shelf where I see it every time I open the fridge. It’s definitely helping….
Great ideas!!! Thanks for sharing. As well as we are working on this, Average amount of food wasted everyday can provide about 100,000 meals for the less fortunate. That’s pretty shocking, but this is the reality which we are facing every day. For that organize an event for food waste reduction in your area. It helps the poor people; every child dies every 5 sec just because of Hunger.
You shared some great ideas here. Given the amount of food wasted (approximate 1.3 billion ton), the problem of food waste has now become a global problem. In such situation tips like these are always appreciated and must be implemented. I am in a hunt of more such tips. Right now, I’ve made my own DIY composting in my backyard as an initiative to reduce wood waste.
Loved this topic. We’ve been trying to be less wasteful with food, making sure we put produce that’s getting close to over ripe on the top shelf where we remember to eat it and using more leftovers. It saves money as does eating at home more and we’ve had enough extra in our budget to donate to the local food pantry.