Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This just makes me sick. I've seen children hunting for food in garbage in 3rd world countries. I know our own children in this country go hungry during the summer when they can't get school meals. There is no excuse for this.
At a local shelter here in town that I volunteer at we try to get as many left over and out of date food as possible that the health department will let businesses donate.
Getting businesses to get over the fear of litigation by donating out of code food is REALLY hard.
It's easier to just through it out and write it off than deal with government regulations, fines and potential litigation.
That is so wrong. We all know by now those expiration sell by dates don't really have anything to do with quality of the food. There has to be a good and fair balance.
US has around 4x more food than is needed, and up to 75% of the nutritional value is lost before it reaches people's mouths. At retail level, large quantities of food are wasted due to quality standards that over-emphasize appearance!!
There are nearly 1B malnourished people in the world, but the approximately 40 million tonnes of food wasted by US households, retailers and food services each year would be enough to satisfy the hunger of every one of them.
In other words - that what we waste could feed all hungry people in the world.
Now, THAT is very sad... http://www.stopthehunger.com/ << this is mind-blowing!
$4 million a day in food is thrown away through the school lunch program which is so sad. The cost of trash pick up has increased for a lot of school districts, in nyc some schools have started mulching programs for all the wasted fruits and veggies. Honestly if the kids won't eat produce why not give it to people who will (like me!)? I hate seeing food wasted, it's one of my pet peeves. My own household has very minimal food waste.
That is so wrong. We all know by now those expiration sell by dates don't really have anything to do with quality of the food. There has to be a good and fair balance.
Not only expiration, but very often just an appearance. Everyone want to buy only perfect looking food. Especially produce.
Anything with uneven color, with spots, or blemishes etc. will be discarded. That's why some produces is cloned (e.g.tomatoes), so every and each one looks perfectly round, red, and spotless...
People don't know that food from the garden does not look perfect.
Our local schools are recycling food waste in the cafeteria for compost. Paper and plastic products as well. Don't know how they handle the uneaten apples, bananas, etc. When I found out my own kids don't drink their entire carton of milk to go with their packed at home lunch we decided to give them cups in their lunch boxes for water. They get plenty of dairy here at home and I don't want to contribute to the waste.
DH suggested I work harder to make meals which have no leftovers....Are you kidding me? I never throw away our leftovers and i can always rely on 1 night every 7 to 10 days when I cobble together leftovers for what I call Refrigerator Roulette Night. Gives me a night off which I need without having to go out. He backed away from that in a hurry.
At a local shelter here in town that I volunteer at we try to get as many left over and out of date food as possible that the health department will let businesses donate.
Getting businesses to get over the fear of litigation by donating out of code food is REALLY hard.
It's easier to just through it out and write it off than deal with government regulations, fines and potential litigation.
you are correct,the fear of litigation is tremendous ,just one public ccomplaint can kill a business
and now with yelp and social media, you get one blemish on a fruit and it can be all over town on facebook
Im in he food business, and on the news - they had a product recall- of a particular ham,, and guess what??
5 people called to say they are sick with salmonella, because that's what the news said - and they all said they had lawyers
this particular ham with the salmonella was never even in the store and these 5 sick people were out for blood, now one of these five people called the newspaper, and guess what???
you guessed it .... word got out to avoid this store..
the store owners were screaming everywhere they never had this ham,,,but the damage was done in the accusations,,,, and media is sensationalizing as much as it can
none of these sick people could bring in a receipt or proof of purchase....
and the store nearly closed, because the town avoided it thinking they had tainted ham
so, of course the stores are going to be concerned of being sue'd
yes, ive seen 100,s of thousands of lbs of stuff dumped and it is said,,
some independents do give to food kitchen..
as time goes on,,,,,more and more are making fruit and veggie platters out of the culls
and also selling the culls so they are not dumped
here is a warning to the potential dumpster divers- stay away from grocery stores dumpsters there is rotten chicken juice everywhere, also pork and beef purge
2 people died eating from a dumpster a decade ago,,
Not only expiration, but very often just an appearance. Everyone want to buy only perfect looking food. Especially produce.
Anything with uneven color, with spots, or blemishes etc. will be discarded. That's why some produces is cloned (e.g.tomatoes), so every and each one looks perfectly round, red, and spotless...
People don't know that food from the garden does not look perfect.
Reminds me,its corn on the cob season and some people wont just pick up a dozen corn and go they have to meticulously husk every corn in the bin to make sure they get 12 absolutely perfect corn ears , then the rest of the shoppers wont touch the corn feeling its been tampered with, manager usually ends up throwing a lot of corn in the dumpster.
I've also seen these same type of people going through the baskets of peaches,picking out each one to make sure their basket of peaches is perfect, what results is baskets of peaches that are ok but just not perfect, they usually get tossed.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
