At any grocery store, restaurant, family Christmas, or summer barbeque, one thing can always be counted on – an abundance of food. But when all that food can’t be eaten, it often ends up in the garbage. In the United States, 40% of food grown is never eaten. While this number also encompasses food that is lost on farms due to bad weather and processing problems, a significant portion of it is food that is wasted. Food waste is “food discarded by retailers due to color or appearance, and plate waste by consumers.” Households in the US waste a total of 76 billion pounds of food a year in the US. These numbers are even starker considering that one in eight families in the United States don’t have access to consistent food.

Why is food wasted?

Abundance, or the appearance of abundance, is a significant aspect of American culture. That means that at family or holiday meals, running out of food would be seen as a failure to provide enough for your guests. Because of this, having food left over indicates that you have more than enough to satisfy your guests. This overbuying can lead to food waste, especially if the food is not saved as leftovers.

Poor planning is also a cause of food waste. It is very easy to go to the grocery store without making a shopping list. In these cases, we buy our groceries without checking first what we have at home, and this can lead to buying doubles. Not only does this lead to having more food than we can eat, but it also takes up valuable shelf space that can hide other foods so that they become forgotten and spoil.

A major reason that food is wasted is confusion over date labels. Other than baby formula, there are no federal regulations about labeling foods. The “use by” and “sell by” dates are not an indicator of food safety, but instead they are the manufacturer estimating when the food will no longer be at its peak freshness. Consumers will often throw food away even before it reaches the date on the label, for fear that the food has already gone bad and will make them sick. In January of this year, Morrisons, a grocery store in the UK, removed the “best before” dates on their milk cartons as a way for people to stop throwing away their milk before it had gone bad. Instead, they recommended using the sniff test. If something like milk or fish is no longer safe to consume, then you will be able to smell it!

The Far-Reaching Harm of Food Waste

Only 5% of food is composted in the US, which means the majority of our food waste is sent to the landfill. When our food waste goes to the landfill, it becomes buried and cannot receive oxygen to break down properly. This is called anaerobic digestion, and it releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. As well, when food waste is sent to the landfill, it is also a waste of all the water, land, and energy that was used to grow the food.

Food waste is also an indicator of the sharp disparity between those with food security and those without. In 2019, Feeding America reported a 12.3% rate of food insecurity in Knox County. That is 56,560 people in Knox County who do not have regular access to food. The number reported from Feeding America is also before the pandemic, so with all the challenges the pandemic has brought, that number is expected to have risen across the nation.

Organizations like Battlefield Farms and Second Harvest Food Bank work to address this food disparity in Knox County. Battlefield Farms specifically addresses the food deserts in East Knoxville. Food deserts are areas where residents are more than one mile away from a grocery store. The USDA identified at least fifteen food deserts in Knox County, and many of those areas are centered around communities of color. Battlefield Farms hosts a farmers’ market at Walter Hardy Park on Sundays from June to September as a way to provide these communities with fresh fruit and vegetables. Second Harvest Food Bank also collects food to distribute to those who are hungry. There are various food drop off locations in Knoxville and the surrounding area, so donating to Second Harvest is a great make sure that your extra food helps someone instead of ending up in the garbage!

Ways to Reduce Food Waste. Photo from European Food Information Council.

How can we reduce food waste?

Meal planning. Go to the grocery store with a plan, and check your shelves before you go.
Use your freezer. If you have perishables that you think are about to go bad, then put them in your freezer. This will keep your food from spoiling until you are ready to eat it.
Revive limp vegetables (such as carrots, broccoli, and celery) by plunging them in cold water.
Compost. Composting your food scraps gives your food waste a second life! We will be discussing how to compost in the next blog post.
Understand sell by dates. As discussed above, don’t throw food away just because it is past the “sell by” date without checking it first.