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I agree with eating what you acquire and prepare, but food waste is also a byproduct of adequate food supply, or of supersaturated food systems. It is not only an individual attitude toward food. It would be great if I could give my leftovers that are likely to go to waste to someone down the hall in my building, but they are not in a food scarce situation. In their calculus, it would be easier, and safer, to make their own dinner. There is perhaps only one person within five miles of me that is food scarce to the point that my leftovers would be useful or desirable to them. Within ten miles, there is perhaps an order of magnitude more; within twenty, two or three orders more. All the same, it would not make sense to rectify accidental waste by donating it in almost every instance when I produce accidental food waste. The transport required would make it unfeasible.

An abundance of food does self-perpetuate to the point that it becomes expendable. Well run family kitchens would likely have a positive effect on people's disposition towards food. I mill grains and bake bread, sourcing the grain supply from a well-run farm in my state, and this never fails to give me a moment to reflect on my relationship to food. It is, unfortunately, not commonplace for American households to engage with their consumption further up the supply chain than the supermarket shelf, where access is the most convenient.

I feel you. In my extended family environment, more food is wasted than necessary. Some relatives have a habit of buying lots of food, more than they need, because they used to be poor and now that they are no longer poor the derive happiness from buying lots of things. The fridge is always full, and they'd still come home with two huge bags packed with food. Food is regularly thrown away because it has rotted in the fridge: food comes in faster than anybody can eat it.

And meals are often bigger than what everyone can finish during that meal. This is especially so when there is visit. In Chinese culture, it's not done to ask visit whether they want more food because they are not supposed to say yes. Asking is thus equivalent to signalling that you don't want to give them more food, i.e. a lack of hospitality. Thus people make more food than necessary.

That in itself isn't a problem because one could save the leftovers in the fridge. But some refuse to eat leftover food because it's not fresh, or they refuse to eat fridge leftovers that are more than 1 day old (you can save most leftovers in the fridge for 3 days if you put them in the fridge immediately after eating). Some even believe that even frozen food is considered unfresh, or has fewer nutrients or something. Others refuse to put anything in the fridge at all because they hate colder-than-room-temperature food (why reheating is a problem eludes me, but they refuse to use reheating as a solution).

All of this pains me. I hate wasting food. The result: I'm often the only one who eats the oldest leftovers, everybody else eats fresh even though there are lots of leftovers.

This doesn't just apply to food, but also energy. Some insist on turning the heat so high that they can wear tshirts indoors during winter, because that's more comfortable than wearing more clothes. Others think I'm being weird for trying so hard to drive electric-only (driving to a public charging station can be a pain compared to parking at the most convenient location).

> you can save most leftovers in the fridge for 3 days if you put them in the fridge immediately after eating

3 days? Try a week or two.

I'm just happy if I can get my wife to put food in the fridge in under 2 hours.

When food prices double/triple/quadruple in the next few years I think people will quickly adapt simply because they won't be able to afford to throw out any food.

We waste a third of what we produce. If you take into account what we burn in the process (fertilizer, fuel, water, manpower), you'll realize how bad are our consumption habits.

"In the United States 30 per cent of all food, worth US$48.3 billion (€32.5 billion), is thrown away each year." "The food currently wasted in Europe could feed 200 million people (FAO, 2013)."

Source: https://www.unep.org/thinkeatsave/get-informed/worldwide-foo...

There are 330 million people in the US so that means the waste is only worth 130 USD per person. Or to put it another way a years worth of food in the US costs only an average of 260 USD, less than a dollar a day.

That seems unlikely to me. I'm pretty sure that even poor people in the US pay more than a dollar a day for their food. So where does all the money go?

Middlemen. Farmers are paid below market rates, and below cost of production in the US.

Tax breaks and other subsidies let the farmers stay afloat, and organizations such as the Chicago Board of Trade set artificially low wholesale prices.

Its not clear if US is any worse of that other countries based on this UN study. The data is very noisy and many developing countries don't have high confidence estimates of waste. Lack of temperature controlled storage and reliable transportation infrastructure can be a big issue in developing countries for example.

https://catalogue.unccd.int/1679_FoodWaste.pdf

I'm from the U.S., and I was actually raised with a somewhat similar view of food waste. But my parents were born in the 30s. Many of my contemporaries had parents born in the 40s or 50s, and their attitudes were very different.

I was over at a friend's house a few years ago, and she had prepared lunch for her daughter. When her daughter complained she didn't like it, my friend threw the whole plate food in the trash without blinking, and made something else. I asked my friend, and she said the food is so cheap it doesn't matter. And you can't just let your child not eat.

My parents certainly didn't grow up poor. Both of my grandfathers made a good living. I don't know what conclusion to draw, but there seems to have been a huge cultural shift towards food in the post war years.

Your friend's kid sounds spoiled tbh.

There are things my kid doesn’t like either. But my partner always asks if I could eat that meal if the child refuses. That’s how we don’t throw away that small meal.

Or you could stop making food you know the kid won't eat.

> And you can't just let your child not eat.

You can, most of us just don't because people think you're neglecting the kid if the kid chooses not to eat a meal you provide them. Same reason we send way more food for lunches than my kids ever eat—because the amount they will eat looks "too small" and my wife's worried what people will think.

I hate this stuff, but get the reasoning. IMO they'll eat if they're hungry. Meanwhile, we have an obesity crisis.

Every time I hear about food waste, I'm glad about what it means for food security. Don't get me wrong, I'm not glad about the fact that food is being wasted, just the implication: If some horrible thing happens and we suddenly lose 30% of food production, nobody will have to starve. We'll have to eat older leftovers and be more careful, but we won't be fighting over food.

Suggested listening about food waste: Econtalk Rachel Laudan on Food Waste Dec 4 2017

Historian Rachel Laudan talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about food waste. Laudan argues that there are tradeoffs in preventing food waste--in reduced time for example, or a reduction in food security, and that these tradeoffs need to be measured carefully when considering policy or giving advice to individuals or organizations. She also discusses the role of food taboos and moralizing about food. Along the way, Laudan defends the virtue of individual choice and freedom in deciding what to eat.

https://www.econtalk.org/rachel-laudan-on-food-waste/

As an African I laughed at this. Swiss kids not clearing their plates is not why people starve in my country. We produce enough food to feed ourselves but

1) poverty means people can't afford food

2) you're not reaching a great many villages by anything bigger than a land cruiser.

Distribution has always been the cause of global hunger issues, at least for the past few decades.

Food security is a wholly separate issue.

Despite growing up in a prosperous nation, as part of a middle-class family, this is always something I've been acutely aware of. Most likely because both of my parents came from backgrounds with their own struggles.

Every time I see a garbage can, I see money that was spent on waste. And when I see money, I see time that was spent. And time is something you can't get back, it's gone for good once you spend it. Every garbage can is a waste of life. Minutes and hours thrown away.

> And when I see money, I see time that was spent. And time is something you can't get back, it's gone for good once you spend it. Every garbage can is a waste of life. Minutes and hours thrown away.

Quite the opposite. Often food waste is the result of convenience. That garbage can full of food in the cafeteria is a prime example: People could get smaller portions, but then they'd have to queue again to get seconds if they got too little, so they get a little more to be on the safe side.

Sometimes, something in my fridge spoils because I didn't eat it fast enough. I could always shop only for the next day when I'm sure I'll eat it, but then I'd spend at least an hour extra each week on trips to the store.

Sure, some time was spent to produce it, but the low price is a good signal that that is negligible.

That reminds me of my mother telling me to eat all of what she served me because there were children starving in Africa. That was nonsense -- not that Africans were starving, but that I should eat more than I wanted or needed because of it. Avoiding food waste is more about serving what you need than about eating everything in front of you.

I was shocked at my first uni cafeteria dishwashing job. Plates coming back literally full, untouched.

How would less wastage help at all? It would just translate to less production and everything would continue with the same risks as always, wouldn't it?

I don't have any food growing in my garden even though I could. Is that food waste? What if I plant some vegies and forget to eat them and they die and rot. Is that food waste? I don't see that food waste itself is a real problem, just an illusion because it's so visible.

Surely we all waste electricity by having hot showers instead of cold, or leaving our computers on when we're not using them. We can afford it, so why not? Even those poor people are wasting oxygen in the air! Imagine how scarce that is in space or a submarine.

Overproduction of food by about 20% is by design in the west, as I understand it. Because you'd rather have a bit too much (which isn't a big problem), than too little (which would quickly be an enormous problem). The problems we're facing now are not caused by that overproduction of food, so I think it isn't a good argument.

I also hate food waste, because it seems to dumb. But I think it is there for a reason - at least to some degree.

My brother worked for a help organization in africa for 1,5 years. When he came back, he told me that they throw food away too. I only cook as much as i can eat.

I don't think food waste can be eliminated. I would even argue that there is threshold after which a decrease in food waste comes at the expense of quality of nutrition.

Even in my university's restaurant, which feeds students on a massive industrial scale, I see food waste. But even in a much bigger scale, the amount was significantly less.

Elimination of food waste is not practical and should not be a goal, you'll just ultimately fail and give up on intermediary goals that might just suffice.

As with any engineering problem, the harder you push some constraints the more you'll have to pay with others. A university-scale cafeteria could greatly reduce food waste by fetching the food off of the plates the customers are done with and putting that food back into the cafeteria for the next customers. But there's reasons that's several violations of the health code. Something has to give at some point.

Onsite composting and vermicomposting is a better place to dump “food waste”.

Where the food usually goes are into landfills where they produce dangerous accumulations of methane that can explode. Some folks have tried capturing that methane to burn, but if stuff can be made into compost, you’d need less synthetic fertilizers.

I think there is some room to innovate before we get to that point. For instance, they could educate students on the economic and ecological costs of food waste, and equip them with tools to reduce it, like associating certain levels of hunger with visible portion sizes, or putting in electronic scales so students are shown how much of each food they eat.

There is an all you can eat chain in my area. Its cheap, but they do charge extra for any leftovers - that approach would likely significantly reduce the waste in places such as uni-scale cafeterias.

Food waste may always be a thing, but it can be handled a lot smarter than we do. We need more of this: https://www.porkbusiness.com/news/hog-production/famed-dirty...

Food waste is mostly just a sign that food is very cheap. Cheap enough that it's not worth trying to save or find another use for what's wasted.

theres some really simple solutions to food waste https://youtu.be/6RlxySFrkIM