Maybe you've heard the numbers. An estimated 40 percent of food in the United States never gets eaten. Americans waste 160 billion pounds of food a year. Every day, that amounts to enough food to fill the Rose Bowl. Twenty-five percent of America's freshwater use goes into the production of food that is then wasted.
Meanwhile, almost 15 percent of American families are "food insecure" at some point in a given year. A lot of this is pulled straight from a recent report from the NRDC and the Harvard Food and Law Policy Clinic. The report argues that a lot of our food waste is attributable to confusion of expiration dates and other "use by" labels. So if you listen carefully today, you'll waste and less and save some money.
GUESTS:
- Emily Broad Leib is the co-author of “The Dating Game: How Confusing Labels Land Billions of Pounds of Food in the Trash.”
- Frank Greene is director of Food and Standards for the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection.
- Jonathan Bloom is the author of American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (And What We Can Do About It).
If you're interested in learning more about how dates are determined or if you have a suggestion for how dating standards could be improved -here's how to contact the National Conference on Weights and Measures.
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