![]() However, the bovine population doesn’t monetize food as a fungible commodity, as people do, preventing a universally adequate food supply when there is more than enough production to allow adequate nutrition for all. ![]() states that the 1.5 billion cows and bulls of the world release approximately “ two billion metric tons of CO 2-equivalents per year.” This is a bit less than two-thirds that of forlorn food produced for human consumption. Through the methane produced by doing their business, they are also culpable critters, if unwitting and incapable of consciously curbing their behavior. ![]() ![]() Compare this to famously pensive ruminants like cows, which do not waste or lose anything in the human sense. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Kranowitz notes, states that food that is not eaten emits 3.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, positing nutritional waste as one of the world’s biggest sources of greenhouse gases. Kranowitz talks up pollution as another harmful effect of food waste. One can view this as an economic issue, a moral one, or both. Our calculations put the average of these estimates at 66.35 million metric tons of food waste per year, but any way you slice it, even the lowest of these estimates stands as an offense against nature. The USDA (66.5 million) and the National Resource Defense Council (86 million) have different agendas and use different tools to gauge the inefficient use of food. The Environmental Protection Agency says 38.4 million tons ReFED, a research and advocacy group fighting food waste, comprised of nonprofit, business and government leaders, calls it 62.5 million. Department of Agriculture (USDA) uses the term “loss” to refer to food that is deemed ruined (spilled, spoiled, bruised, wilted, or otherwise not deemed saleable or consumable) before it reaches the intended consumer.Īnd just as you can’t trust a fisherman to truthfully describe the size of his catch without the evidence in hand, major organizations dealing with food issues have widely disparate estimates of food waste in the United States. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses the term “waste,” he notes, to refer to good food that does not get eaten after consumers purchase it. Kranowitz, in his article for the New York City Food Policy Center at Hunter College, argues that food waste reduction can’t get off the ground because there is no standard measurement of the amount of food waste in the United States, and not even a standard word to discuss it. “Even though the carrot tops are bitter when raw,” Kranowitz writes, “they can be sautéed like other leafy greens, or put into soups, imparting a taste somewhere between parsley and carrots, and they are rich in vitamin C, potassium and calcium.” Kranowitz encourages consumers to experiment with other fruit and vegetable parts as one of many easy means to reduce food waste. However, they are quite useful in cuisine when prepared right, and he uses this as an example of the many common sources of America’s unconscious food waste that can be easily remedied. Kranowitz recognizes that the majority of American consumers, restaurants, and grocery vendors don’t think twice about lopping off and discarding the heads of their carrots. Believe it or not, a carrot top is fit for consumption! No, not the loopy orange-tressed late-night-show regular and Las Vegas headliner, but rather the leafy-green pompadour atop every carrot when it is rooted from the ground, according to sustainability advocate Jeremy Kranowitz, currently an affiliate with the Keystone Policy Center, who wrote “Down the Rabbit Hole: Why Measuring Food Waste Is So Confusing” for the New York Food Policy Center.
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