USDA Says a Fourth of U.S. Food Is Wasted

Americans routinely toss away uneaten vegetables, day-old bread and other pantry items, wasting one-fourth of the nation’s total food supply, the U.S. Agriculture Department said. If just 5% of the wasted food that is nutritious and safe was recovered from restaurants, grocery stores and pantry shelves, it could feed an estimated 4 million poor and homeless U.S. citizens, the new USDA study said. “By recovering a fraction of this lost food, we could get food to those in need instead of tossing it into the dumpster,” said Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, who released the study at a hunger relief conference