The Big Waste

Last night I watched a foodnetwork show The Big Waste and it nearly brought me to tears. Huge piles of perfectly good food tossed out by stores, farms, wholesale places and restaurants. I saw a preview of it while watching another show and it got my attention - I had to see just how much food people waste every day. And I expected it be allot. But never in my mind did I expect what I saw - 5 billion eggs wasted in the US alone every year; every day a football stadium can be filled with tossed good to eat food. Piles of not expired food that had a blemish or a scratch or just wasn't pretty enough for people to buy in the stores were tossed out. I have to admit, it's the piles of fresh tomatoes, peppers and other produce that was wasted on the farms that really knocked me down. In my garden we don't waste anything - I even picked out green tomatoes and used them in chutney or let them ripen with time so we could use them, and on the screen I watched enough tomatoes to make hundreds of jars of marinara going to compost because they "don't look pretty" or have a crack from dry weather. One U-pick farm owner said that they have 40% waste. This was insane and very surreal experience for me. I guess you really have to experience hunger at least once to really appreciate what you have around you and not to allow anything like that happen. What makes it really sad is that we have millions of people who are going to bed hungry because they can't afford food and definitely can't afford good fresh produce but instead of letting them have food it goes to waste. I know that our local supermarket have policy of not giving away food that they want to throw away because of the fear of lawsuits but there has to be some common sense here. It's time to wake up people. One day there simply won't be enough food to go around considering explosive population growth and we have to start saving that food now.