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"per capita food waste in Europe and North America is 95kg to 105kg a year" That's a massive amount, and that is just waste in the household, not waste in the

"per capita food waste in Europe and North America is 95kg to 105kg a year" That's a massive amount, and that is just waste in the household, not waste in the farm or factory. I can understand some wastage of salad and berries etc, but they're all lighter stuff. How can the average westerner waste 2kg food a week???

altcognito 8y ago
Food has a high % of water content and is therefore very heavy.
remote_phone 8y ago
It’s very easy. At least in the US, portion sizes are too big. If you go to a restaurant it’s profitable for them to increase the size of a meal by 50% and charge 25% more, which looks like a cost savings and value. But then the food ends up being wasted.
linuxftw 8y ago
Many people don't eat leftovers. In some cases it's cheaper to buy 5 lbs of something and throw out 2 pounds than to pay for 3 1-lb packages. Have you ever been to a restaurant? Most people throw out over 25% of the food on their plates. This is all a symptom of a distorted market place. Food's too cheap thanks to subsidized farming.
- benj111 8y ago
  "Have you ever been to a restaurant? Most people throw out over 25% of the food on their plates" I've worked in a few. As a European I'd say food waste was lower than that. Id expect restaurant food waste to be higher, as they can't personalise portion sizes as effectively, so unless most people eat out most days, I don't see how that could account for all the waste. But apparently it does? I really hope peelings etc are included, because even then there's still a family out there wasting 3kg+ of food/person/wk, just to balance my family out.
  - allannienhuis 8y ago
    Europeans out out a lot less than most places in the world. Perhaps a stronger home-cooking culture. https://www.nielsen.com/ca/en/insights/news/2016/dining-without-doing-dishes-almost-half-globally-eat-away-from-home.html https://www.nielsen.com/ca/en/insights/news/2016/dining-with... Looks like it's about twice as often as in Europe. Interestingly Asia/Pacific is even higher (cheap street food FTW!)
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  I don't think we have to look further than the convenience culture to explain the behavior. It's not, in my experience, economical at all. The people I see wasting food are being very wasteful of their money in the process, they're just being stupid and careless.
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    Well, I'd argue, it's because they can afford to. Most people don't throw away relatively more expensive items. If a pound of meat cost $30, would people be so careless with it?
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      Merely growing up poor fixes that problem. Older family members would finish off a lot more from each chicken wing than I would.
- anticensor 8y ago
  > Have you ever been to a restaurant? Most people throw out over 25% of the food on their plates. It is easy to order a smaller portion of most meals. The problem lies on the client in this case.
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    Is it? Most non-fast food places get cranky if you try to order off the kids menu.
    - anticensor 8y ago
      I mean half a portion of regular selection, not the kids menu. They would happily prepare even if you would pay the same price in the worst case.
alpha_squared 8y ago
Between throwing out food that's gone bad and leaving unfinished plates at restaurants, I can absolutely believe that. There are some who strictly abide by the packaging expiration date and many people don't package the remainder of their restaurant dish to take home.
newnewpdro 8y ago
I've lived with a variety of random people in shared circumstances, and it seems quite common for people to pack a refrigerator with perishables either in the form of leftovers or new groceries then forget it exists while continuing to eat the most convenient stuff at restaurants/the office. Refrigeration in general encourages the behavior, without delivering on convenience since you generally have to reheat or partially recook the food only to have something inferior to the more convenient, freshly made by someone else option. People I've known feel accomplished just by asking to take leftovers home and placing them in the refrigerator with the feigned intention of eating them, knowing full well they will spoil and go to waste. It's an absurdity; they add packaging waste (often plastic at least in the bag) to their charade, mostly because they don't want to appear wasteful at the location they didn't finish their meal, and wish to dispose of it in the privacy of their home after spending energy on refrigerating it for a week.
- hopler 8y ago
  I can't understand "feeling accomplished" by getting a doggy bag.
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    In the more superficial of my peers, just maintaining an appearance of someone that isn't wasteful is an accomplishment. They live incredibly wasteful lives, but especially on the west coast, it's very hip to appear like you care about the environment and aren't being wasteful. Then if you throw some sociopathy into the mix, there's an even greater sense of accomplishment in knowing what you're doing is actually increasing the waste by pointlessly packaging up the food destined for the landfill because you'll never actually eat it. Inconveniencing the staff to package your leftovers on top of it is just gravy.
BurningFrog 8y ago
Keep in mind that a lot of that "waste" happens before the food reaches us consumers.
- benj111 8y ago
  This is just the consumer waste. Ie the red bit of that first chart.
  - BurningFrog 8y ago
    I'll admit I didn't read the article :/
crazygringo 8y ago
Yes that sounds insane. That's 0.6 lbs food per day, which is the same as throwing away by weight every day (using McD's as an internationally recognizable reference): - 1.5 McDonald's quarter-pounder sandwiches [1] - or 2.5 portions of McDonald's medium fries [2] That seems like a lot of food to waste. Like that just doesn't pass the smell test... Maybe they're counting liquids like milk too, that's gone past the expiration date? Otherwise I just can't wrap my head around this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_Pounder#Product_description https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_Pounder#Product_descri... [2] https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/help/faq/19041-how-much-do-small-medium-and-large-fries-weigh.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/help/faq/19041-how-much-d...
- Pfhreak 8y ago
  That sounds low, based on the American families I know...
- dEnigma 8y ago
  Of course it should count as food waste if you let your milk expire and throw/pour it away (or worse, pour it away because it's past the expiration date, even though it's still perfectly fine)
  - hopler 8y ago
    "mass" is a poor measure of food waste because many foods are primarily water.
sfotm 8y ago
I don’t think it’s in the purely personal sense. Imagine how much unused food must be thrown out at restaurants and delicatessens. Buffet and prepared foods probably don’t roll over into the next day.
benj111 8y ago
I note that most replies seem to point to the bad habits of others. This is an average. Everyone is wasting this on average. So presumably there's either a stigma against wasting food, which makes it all the more crazy, and/or people that waste food aren't interested in this kind of article. That would suggest they waste even more than average.
ip26 8y ago
I always want to know where that's measured. Presumably it includes food that went bad in the fridge, and food that was thrown away from the plate. But does it also include apple cores, animal bones, coffee grounds, onion peels, citrus rinds, banana peels, and so on & so forth? In a perfect world we'd make more soup stock, zest, and marmalade but I think compost is a pretty reasonable path for carrot tops and potato eyes.
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  Or foods that don’t require peeling, like potatoes, carrots or cucumbers. On that note, it’s nearing time for me to make more limoncello/orangecello...
pkaye 8y ago
This probably includes all stages of the food value chain. A good chunk will be at the farmer but in general their scale is big enough that they can redirect to animal feed. Or a it could be at the grocer who bought too much carrots and they are starting to wilt. But at this stage things are mixed up too much so more likely to be redirected for compost. Or it could be at the restaurant which gives you a big plate of food but you are full and don't take the rest home. http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/ http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/
SllX 8y ago
It took me a long time when I first started living alone and taking care of all my meals to figure out how to not waste my food, mostly through trial, error, and taking note of every single useful bit of advice I came across online or in meatspace. I still don’t think I’m particularly efficient, just that I waste a lot less than I used to, and if I could fit a freezer chest in my apartment, I know a few ways that I could waste even less. Mainly what I do now is to shop at a local grocery just about every day, I’m blessed with an abundance of those and good options, and try not to buy more than I will cook in a day or two. This has become easier since switching to an almost entirely meat, egg and vegetable diet so I don’t have dairy products, soy products, bread, pasta, cereals, noodles, beans, or anything besides my spices, dried herbs, salts, oils and vinegars sitting around. Despite that, I still end up throwing away more than I would like every few weeks, but probably not 2kg a week. Had I grown up in a household with people that knew how to manage a household, it would have been a lot less trial and error, but with our over reliance on packaged foods instead of just what you can find in the produce section and at the butcher, probably a lot of people like me are growing up not learning how to manage their pantries and fridges. That’s without even factoring in restaurants. It isn’t uncommon for people to not finish their food and leave it rather than taking the rest with them, and more so the more people eat out. Rather than finishing their leftovers at home, if they even took it home, people will often just go out to eat again the next day.
darkpuma 8y ago
If anything, Americans should be throwing out even more food. With the astronomical obesity rates, I don't think we should be encouraging people to finish what's on their plate. If that seems wasteful to you, then I assert you're not looking at the big picture. Habitual overeating causes even worse portion control in the future, which causes even more food waste in the long run.
- hopler 8y ago
  The cure for obesity is making better choices at the store, not at home.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    Poor portion control plays a large role in it. A great many people simply eat way too much.
    - jogjayr 8y ago
      Portion control means making and serving smaller portions. Not throwing out half the food on your plate.
      - darkpuma 8y ago
        Portion control means serving yourself less, but failing that, it means stopping when you're full, not continuing to eat what you've served yourself in the name of preventing food waste. Once you start doing that, you reinforce the behavior of serving yourself too much and eventually begin to crave more food than you should be eating. Portion control is unrelated to how much food you make, assuming you have a refrigerator and don't think yourself too good for leftovers...
        jogjayr 8y ago
        > not continuing to eat what you've served yourself in the name of preventing food waste You could also cover your plate and put it in the fridge. Doing that requires the same amount of self-control as your prescription of clearing your plate in the trash once you're full. Both are hard for many people to do. It's easier to exercise restraint when serving than when eating. For example, Google successfully reduced food consumption and food waste by reducing the plate size in cafes. [1] > Portion control is unrelated to how much food you make Not entirely. Even in the fridge, food will only stay good for a certain amount of time. Most people won't want to eat the same thing more than 3 meals in a row. These are also reasons for overeating or throwing food out. 1. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-i-lost-30-pounds-over-two-years-kept-off-laszlo-bock https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-i-lost-30-pounds-over-two...
briandear 8y ago
Do you eat onion peels? How about banana peel? Do you eat the bones of meat? 2kg isn’t that much.

altcognito 8y ago

Food has a high % of water content and is therefore very heavy.

remote_phone 8y ago

It’s very easy. At least in the US, portion sizes are too big. If you go to a restaurant it’s profitable for them to increase the size of a meal by 50% and charge 25% more, which looks like a cost savings and value. But then the food ends up being wasted.

linuxftw 8y ago

Many people don't eat leftovers. In some cases it's cheaper to buy 5 lbs of something and throw out 2 pounds than to pay for 3 1-lb packages. Have you ever been to a restaurant? Most people throw out over 25% of the food on their plates. This is all a symptom of a distorted market place. Food's too cheap thanks to subsidized farming.

benj111 8y ago
"Have you ever been to a restaurant? Most people throw out over 25% of the food on their plates" I've worked in a few. As a European I'd say food waste was lower than that. Id expect restaurant food waste to be higher, as they can't personalise portion sizes as effectively, so unless most people eat out most days, I don't see how that could account for all the waste. But apparently it does? I really hope peelings etc are included, because even then there's still a family out there wasting 3kg+ of food/person/wk, just to balance my family out.
- allannienhuis 8y ago
  Europeans out out a lot less than most places in the world. Perhaps a stronger home-cooking culture. https://www.nielsen.com/ca/en/insights/news/2016/dining-without-doing-dishes-almost-half-globally-eat-away-from-home.html https://www.nielsen.com/ca/en/insights/news/2016/dining-with... Looks like it's about twice as often as in Europe. Interestingly Asia/Pacific is even higher (cheap street food FTW!)
newnewpdro 8y ago
I don't think we have to look further than the convenience culture to explain the behavior. It's not, in my experience, economical at all. The people I see wasting food are being very wasteful of their money in the process, they're just being stupid and careless.
- linuxftw 8y ago
  Well, I'd argue, it's because they can afford to. Most people don't throw away relatively more expensive items. If a pound of meat cost $30, would people be so careless with it?
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    Merely growing up poor fixes that problem. Older family members would finish off a lot more from each chicken wing than I would.
anticensor 8y ago
> Have you ever been to a restaurant? Most people throw out over 25% of the food on their plates. It is easy to order a smaller portion of most meals. The problem lies on the client in this case.
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  Is it? Most non-fast food places get cranky if you try to order off the kids menu.
  - anticensor 8y ago
    I mean half a portion of regular selection, not the kids menu. They would happily prepare even if you would pay the same price in the worst case.

alpha_squared 8y ago

Between throwing out food that's gone bad and leaving unfinished plates at restaurants, I can absolutely believe that. There are some who strictly abide by the packaging expiration date and many people don't package the remainder of their restaurant dish to take home.

newnewpdro 8y ago

I've lived with a variety of random people in shared circumstances, and it seems quite common for people to pack a refrigerator with perishables either in the form of leftovers or new groceries then forget it exists while continuing to eat the most convenient stuff at restaurants/the office. Refrigeration in general encourages the behavior, without delivering on convenience since you generally have to reheat or partially recook the food only to have something inferior to the more convenient, freshly made by someone else option. People I've known feel accomplished just by asking to take leftovers home and placing them in the refrigerator with the feigned intention of eating them, knowing full well they will spoil and go to waste. It's an absurdity; they add packaging waste (often plastic at least in the bag) to their charade, mostly because they don't want to appear wasteful at the location they didn't finish their meal, and wish to dispose of it in the privacy of their home after spending energy on refrigerating it for a week.

hopler 8y ago
I can't understand "feeling accomplished" by getting a doggy bag.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  In the more superficial of my peers, just maintaining an appearance of someone that isn't wasteful is an accomplishment. They live incredibly wasteful lives, but especially on the west coast, it's very hip to appear like you care about the environment and aren't being wasteful. Then if you throw some sociopathy into the mix, there's an even greater sense of accomplishment in knowing what you're doing is actually increasing the waste by pointlessly packaging up the food destined for the landfill because you'll never actually eat it. Inconveniencing the staff to package your leftovers on top of it is just gravy.

BurningFrog 8y ago

Keep in mind that a lot of that "waste" happens before the food reaches us consumers.

benj111 8y ago
This is just the consumer waste. Ie the red bit of that first chart.
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  I'll admit I didn't read the article :/

crazygringo 8y ago

Yes that sounds insane. That's 0.6 lbs food per day, which is the same as throwing away by weight every day (using McD's as an internationally recognizable reference): - 1.5 McDonald's quarter-pounder sandwiches [1] - or 2.5 portions of McDonald's medium fries [2] That seems like a lot of food to waste. Like that just doesn't pass the smell test... Maybe they're counting liquids like milk too, that's gone past the expiration date? Otherwise I just can't wrap my head around this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_Pounder#Product_description https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_Pounder#Product_descri... [2] https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/help/faq/19041-how-much-do-small-medium-and-large-fries-weigh.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/help/faq/19041-how-much-d...

Pfhreak 8y ago
That sounds low, based on the American families I know...
dEnigma 8y ago
Of course it should count as food waste if you let your milk expire and throw/pour it away (or worse, pour it away because it's past the expiration date, even though it's still perfectly fine)
- hopler 8y ago
  "mass" is a poor measure of food waste because many foods are primarily water.

sfotm 8y ago

I don’t think it’s in the purely personal sense. Imagine how much unused food must be thrown out at restaurants and delicatessens. Buffet and prepared foods probably don’t roll over into the next day.

benj111 8y ago

I note that most replies seem to point to the bad habits of others. This is an average. Everyone is wasting this on average. So presumably there's either a stigma against wasting food, which makes it all the more crazy, and/or people that waste food aren't interested in this kind of article. That would suggest they waste even more than average.

ip26 8y ago

I always want to know where that's measured. Presumably it includes food that went bad in the fridge, and food that was thrown away from the plate. But does it also include apple cores, animal bones, coffee grounds, onion peels, citrus rinds, banana peels, and so on & so forth? In a perfect world we'd make more soup stock, zest, and marmalade but I think compost is a pretty reasonable path for carrot tops and potato eyes.

Scoundreller 8y ago
Or foods that don’t require peeling, like potatoes, carrots or cucumbers. On that note, it’s nearing time for me to make more limoncello/orangecello...

pkaye 8y ago

This probably includes all stages of the food value chain. A good chunk will be at the farmer but in general their scale is big enough that they can redirect to animal feed. Or a it could be at the grocer who bought too much carrots and they are starting to wilt. But at this stage things are mixed up too much so more likely to be redirected for compost. Or it could be at the restaurant which gives you a big plate of food but you are full and don't take the rest home. http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/ http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/

SllX 8y ago

It took me a long time when I first started living alone and taking care of all my meals to figure out how to not waste my food, mostly through trial, error, and taking note of every single useful bit of advice I came across online or in meatspace. I still don’t think I’m particularly efficient, just that I waste a lot less than I used to, and if I could fit a freezer chest in my apartment, I know a few ways that I could waste even less. Mainly what I do now is to shop at a local grocery just about every day, I’m blessed with an abundance of those and good options, and try not to buy more than I will cook in a day or two. This has become easier since switching to an almost entirely meat, egg and vegetable diet so I don’t have dairy products, soy products, bread, pasta, cereals, noodles, beans, or anything besides my spices, dried herbs, salts, oils and vinegars sitting around. Despite that, I still end up throwing away more than I would like every few weeks, but probably not 2kg a week. Had I grown up in a household with people that knew how to manage a household, it would have been a lot less trial and error, but with our over reliance on packaged foods instead of just what you can find in the produce section and at the butcher, probably a lot of people like me are growing up not learning how to manage their pantries and fridges. That’s without even factoring in restaurants. It isn’t uncommon for people to not finish their food and leave it rather than taking the rest with them, and more so the more people eat out. Rather than finishing their leftovers at home, if they even took it home, people will often just go out to eat again the next day.

darkpuma 8y ago

If anything, Americans should be throwing out even more food. With the astronomical obesity rates, I don't think we should be encouraging people to finish what's on their plate. If that seems wasteful to you, then I assert you're not looking at the big picture. Habitual overeating causes even worse portion control in the future, which causes even more food waste in the long run.

hopler 8y ago
The cure for obesity is making better choices at the store, not at home.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Poor portion control plays a large role in it. A great many people simply eat way too much.
  - jogjayr 8y ago
    Portion control means making and serving smaller portions. Not throwing out half the food on your plate.
    - darkpuma 8y ago
      Portion control means serving yourself less, but failing that, it means stopping when you're full, not continuing to eat what you've served yourself in the name of preventing food waste. Once you start doing that, you reinforce the behavior of serving yourself too much and eventually begin to crave more food than you should be eating. Portion control is unrelated to how much food you make, assuming you have a refrigerator and don't think yourself too good for leftovers...
      - jogjayr 8y ago
        > not continuing to eat what you've served yourself in the name of preventing food waste You could also cover your plate and put it in the fridge. Doing that requires the same amount of self-control as your prescription of clearing your plate in the trash once you're full. Both are hard for many people to do. It's easier to exercise restraint when serving than when eating. For example, Google successfully reduced food consumption and food waste by reducing the plate size in cafes. [1] > Portion control is unrelated to how much food you make Not entirely. Even in the fridge, food will only stay good for a certain amount of time. Most people won't want to eat the same thing more than 3 meals in a row. These are also reasons for overeating or throwing food out. 1. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-i-lost-30-pounds-over-two-years-kept-off-laszlo-bock https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-i-lost-30-pounds-over-two...

briandear 8y ago

Do you eat onion peels? How about banana peel? Do you eat the bones of meat? 2kg isn’t that much.