The Missing Mass of American Food
by Spence Cooper on 11/27/09 at 10:46 am
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Do What Grandma Told You...Don't Waste Food
Kevin Hall, a quantitative physiologist at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, and his colleague Carson Chow, a mathematician at NIDDK, would like to know where the missing mass of American food has gone. Hall and Chow devised a unique equation: the two of them analyzed average body weight in the United States from 1974 to 2003 and calculated how much food people consumed during that 29 year period. They compared that amount with estimates of the food available for U.S. consumers based on figures from a U.S. government report submitted to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
According to their study, nearly forty percent of the food supply in the United States goes to waste. “The numbers are pretty shocking,” says Kevin Hall. The difference between calories available and calories consumed, they say, is food wasted. “We called it the missing mass of American food,” says co-author Carson Chow.
“In 2003, some 3750 calories were available daily per capita; 2300 were consumed, so 1450 were wasted, comprising 39% of the available food supply, the team reports in the November issue of PLoS ONE. This figure exceeds the 27% estimated by the USDA from interviews with consumers and producers.”
In contrast, Hall and Chow claim that in 1974 only thirty percent of calories in the U.S. food system went to waste. So where are the extra losses? “That’s a very interesting question to which we don’t have an answer,” says Hall. What Hall does know is that US per capita food waste has progressively increased by fifty percent since 1974. Much of the waste is probably happening at home, say experts. Jeffery Sobal, a sociologist at Cornell University, and his colleagues found that production accounted for 20% of waste, distribution for about another 20%, and consumers for the remaining 60%. “Food waste used to be a cultural sin,” Sobal says.
Greg Keoleian, a chemical engineer who co-directs the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor says many Americans are eating more than they need to. “Waste and overconsumption is the key issue affecting the sustainability of the U.S. food system,” he says.
The Food Stamp System Tries to Alleviate Hunger
I find this report particularly disturbing considering that a record number of Americans are receiving food stamp assistance which soared above 36 million in August for the eighth month in a row. That means one in eight Americans receives benefits — and enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program increased by almost five million in 2009, compared to two million from May to August.
Additionally, a recent report released by the U.S.D.A indicates that nearly 15 percent of U.S. families didn’t get enough to eat last year, or 17 million households, including almost one child in four. That’s an increase of four million more households than in 2007, or up 11 percent — one million children were forced to cut back or miss meals. Across the nation, food charity organization like the Salvation Army report being stretched to the breaking point. What a lurid tragedy that so much food is wasted in a nation where so many are going hungry.
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