Thankfully laws are beginning to be made that makes it illegal for grocery stores to throw away certain types of food. They have to donate it to food banks.
IIRC France has a law like that and I’m fairly sure Canada does too.
Doesn’t stop restaurants/cafes though. I briefly worked for an Italian deli that made their own bread and threw out an entire large rubbermaid bin of expensive bread every day. As an employee I could take as much as I wanted. Now looking back (that was in my 20s) as someone who regularly goes to a couple food banks, I should’ve just taken the whole bin and given it away. They even had me dump it in a dumpster that’s locked behind an iron gate so people couldn’t get to it. Greed, if humanity doesn’t curb it, it’ll continue to curb us.
Starvation isn’t a production problem but a distribution problem fueled by capitalism and resource hoarding.
This is just another daily reminder of this quote …
“Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich”
I remember reading years ago as well that there is more than enough food and water to make every living human comfortable and fed … Africa alone could be able to self sustain itself by producing its own food and providing clean water for every person the continent if all its resources and services were organized in the most efficient way - instead the finances of African nations is organized in such a way that they spend more on paying for debts and selling all their resources to first world nations.
In this day in age, with the amount of knowledge, technology and ability we have on the planet … every living human should have proper drinking water and they should have all the food they need … there should be no excuse for anyone any where to be starving or lacking water.
The fact that there are starving people in the world means that we all accept a world where thousands and even millions go without.
I heard that the whole tomato throw thing in Spain was held mostly for keeping prices up, and in fact most grape producing countries did also entertain grape dumping on good years.
When I asked an economics major, he told me that while charity is great and all, the costs of logistics (especially when it isn’t end to end) is more costly than just buying it straight at the market.
So we’re just dumping the food.
It’s not true, the Tomatina started small and grew over the years after becoming popular.
I don’t know if other countries have what we call “fiestas del pueblo”, local festivities. Every town have their own around their patron saint, they usually last around a week depending how big is the town, during those festivities is where you find all sorts weird traditions like that.
Anyone who’s worked in a restaurant knows this. I threw out so much perfectly good food at close as a dishwasher.
I will blame the Monsanto corporation (now Bayer). Their powerful herbicide (Roundup) and trademarked herbicide resistant seeds (Roundup Ready) with predatory contracts made agriculture both more productive and more expensive.
Also capturing the market and creating an unhealthy mono-culture. The overuse of pesticides has also caused a bug apocalypse that will eventually destroy our food chain leading to the end of wild animal life as we know it.
So they didn’t just fuck over the farmers, they fucked the whole world over and they get to laugh all they way to the bank.
What are those numbers in…burgers/day?
I wonder how much of those 1,572 kcal/day for the US is because of how much more processed our food generally is… it’s easy to have a few bites of a meal be hundreds of calories with the added fats and other junk in processed food.
I’m not saying that the US doesn’t waste the most food in general, but I don’t know if it’s exactly an apples to apples comparison looking at this chart and comparing countries like US vs India for example.
Portion sizes are also ridiculous in the US. As a Dutch dude, a (not so much processed) meal in a US restaurant is way, way too much for me. And I’m known for eating a lot here. Not everyone takes home a doggie bag.
More likely a massive amount of it is food waste from restaurants. And most restaurants don’t donate anything at the end of the day.
Yay! We’re number one! USA, USA, USA! Fuck me.
All the uneaten food at home goes into compost. Every few months that compost is spread in the yard.
It’s no perfect but it’s not going to waste.
