Nourishment Down the Drain

It’s a day of hot dogs and other foods on the grill that are bound to be enjoyed. This holiday feasting comes soon after release of a U.S. Agriculture Department finding that 27% of the food produced in the United States each year is discarded instead of consumed. That works out to about a pound of food per person wasted each day. Nearly one-third of all grain and dairy products in the food supply and about one-fourth of fruits and vegetables are thrown out, along with large quantities of eggs, poultry, meat, sweeteners and oils. If just 5% of the 96 billion pounds of edible food discarded each year could be salvaged, 4 million people a day could be fed.

Food recovery programs already do an estimable job in moving leftover or unwanted food from markets and restaurants to food banks for the hungry. The Good Samaritan Food Donation Act passed by Congress last year encourages contributions of excess food by limiting the liability of the donors. But hunger in America remains a large problem. The Agriculture Department spent almost $38 billion last year to provide food aid to 45 million Americans. But a month’s worth of food stamps, hunger groups say, often meets only three weeks of a family’s food needs.

The big problem with recovering and recycling food that would otherwise be lost is that most wastage occurs in the home. Once not too long ago, wilted celery, wrinkled tomatoes and leftover beans would have gone into a nourishing soup. Now they are likely to be consigned to the garbage disposal.

The Agriculture Department study also found that many consumers threw out unspoiled food because they had trouble understanding package-dating information. “Sell by” or “Best if consumed by” does not mean that food ceases to be safe or edible beyond the given date.

Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman has invited leaders from state and local governments, religious groups and corporations and others to a meeting in Washington in September to share ideas on how surplus food can be recovered and used to feed the hungry. Certainly, given the magnitude of food wastage, it’s a brainstorming session long overdue.