A shot of the fridge showed 5 cartons of eggs, 10 packs of chicken and piles of other fruits, veggies and meat. 20% of landfills in America are made up of "consumer waste" which means just because one potato was moldy, that the entire bag gets to rot somewhere when instead the supermarket could just donate the un-moldy food to charity, or soup kitchens. The most common dumpster ingredients are organic food. So that carton of eggs that is "cage free" or "organic chicken fed" that you would pay 6$+ for in the supermarket, is now free because the sell by date was that day, or its missing an egg etc.
In just one week of dumpster diving the family had enough meat to survive a whole year. Why aren`t more people dumpster diving? None of the supermarkets would be interviewed on or off camera about why they weren`t doing something about all the unused food.
I find it sort of poetic, that these people can literally take "one mans waste" and feed their families. Even though dumpster diving is illegal and they do get caught and have been arrested for for dumpster diving and taking unwanted food.
The food bank of America is short about 11 million pounds of food each year even though supermarkets are part of the affiliates and regularly donate food, but the food in the dumpsters would help the food bank meet their quota with about 10 million pounds to spare! And its not just the supermarkets, food waste happens on the farm while picking, in transit, during processing, its amazing any food makes it to the shelves at all.
They even show you the math showing you in different graphs how much food is wasted and how it could help us to reuse it. Like if we fed the unused food to pigs that were being raised for meat it would raise 200 thousand piglets, which would save us money on grains but hurt the pockets of the wealthy grain farmers, who are growing corn below cost anyway!
Example: with the U.S`s food waste, the entire country of Haiti could be fed for a year or more, so why aren`t we doing it?
"Nearly half of the kids and 90% of black children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives"
So true, I my self am on food stamps, but I coupon clip and stockpile our food, and grow some of it out in my 2 gardens. Anything we don`t eat goes to the dogs or the rats or is composted or recycled. We barely put anything in a trash can.
And some of the waste is due to people not knowing enough about food to determine whether or not it is safe to eat still. Back in the day everyone knew how to tell a bad egg from a good egg, but now we just go by labels, even though the "best by" dates are usually off by about a week to keep companies from getting sued. When I worked at McDonald's we threw out food every day. Sometimes we would take home parfaits or salads, and let me tell you they last much longer than 8-12 hours. We had fruit and yogurt parfaits a week and a half later.
We all are to blame really. America has become lazy, which is obvious because we actually had to invent video game systems to get us up off the couch, our kids are obese, diabetes is a common household word and nobody cares. Not surprising that most of the food that is wasted is fresh food. No one wants to cook anymore!
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