To Eat or Not to Eat
Hard to say which choice should make you feel less guilty:
Every day, the average American throws away about one-and-a-half pounds of food. Slightly wilted lettuce, half-eaten cheeseburgers, bruised apples end up in the trash instead of our stomachs. Better to buy and cook less food, and compost the rest. Although it doesn’t sound like much, those nearly one-and-a-half pounds add up — 31 million tons end in landfills or incinerators each year. That’s roughly equivalent to the weight of 74 Golden Gate bridges. These dumps are not only unsightly, they produce 34% of the methane in the U.S. — a greenhouse gas more than 20 times as potent [for global warming] as carbon dioxide.
Full article on food waste in USA Today.
This is not a hard choice at all. I feel less guilty when I eat less and toss the rest away. It’s not my fault the scraps are not disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.
I’m with Vicki.
It’s portion sizes. Restaurants serve giant portions. Is it more wasteful to throw away food or to ask for a carry out for the remainders? I try to split entrees whenever possible or order a lunch portion (still too big!). But, if I could order ala carte and get a smaller meal, I would certainly do that.
Didn’t your mother tell you to eat all the food on your plate because of millions of poor starving Chinese? Now the message is: eat all the food on you plate because of all the landfills.
A British study estimates that one-fifth of the food we produce is wasted. It’s probably higher in my household. I buy stuff and never get around to eating it until I finally decide it’s taking up too much space in my cabinets.
In our household, we buy only the food we consume. We throw nothing edible out. I don’t know what kind of people you are but you all sound like a bunch of spoiled rotton slobs. Why would you throw anything out after you purchased it? Just take a $20 out of your wallet and put it in the garbage, it would save you the trouble. Consume what you buy and you’ll need to buy alot less. Jeeze…
klem, did you get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?