Chron Editorial LiveJournalist still piqued over leftover rejection?
Some time ago, Chron Editorial LiveJournalist Andrea Georgsson lamented on the Chronicle editorial page that none of her neighbors wanted her leftovers when her electric went out.
The outrage!
She may still be upset (and unstable), judging from this unsigned editorial today:
Waste not
This nation of fatties who throw out tons of food is beginning to stop taking meals for granted
The newspaper is full of stories of rising food prices, more demand for food assistance through food pantries and sharply lower food donations to feed growing numbers of hungry people — not to mention violent unrest provoked by unaffordable prices and scarcity. From this, a small bright side is emerging: Americans are taking renewed interest in curtailing the massive amount of food wasted everyday.
In the lean years of the Great Depression, families would not dream of throwing away perfectly edible food. But economic times improved, and modern agriculture production and distribution methods created a cheap and plentiful supply of meats, grains and produce. Today, cleaning one's plate to avoid wasting a morsel has given way to wasteful all-you-can-eat buffets, outsized portions and leftovers that are thrown out rather than eaten. The moldering contents of office fridges across the land tell the story of a people who by and large take food for granted and are indifferent to its waste.
The last time the Department of Agriculture reported on how much food goes to waste each year was in 1997. That study found that Americans toss out or let rot an astonishing 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food produced, according to the May 18 New York Times. Milk, fresh produce, grain-based foods and sugars, the Times said, comprised two-thirds of the waste.
Some of the tossed food is table scraps. Some is left to rot in fields. A shocking amount is composed of restaurant and grocery discards that are 100 percent edible. They are fruits and vegetables with minor blemishes, dented canned goods, still-fresh dairy products discarded on sell-by dates that are widely viewed to be overly conservative, and trays of never-touched prepared dishes that didn't sell.
She had to be DYING to work her unwanted leftover London Broil into the editorial!
Calling the US a "nation of fatties" was a nice touch, though -- surely a demonstration of the "elegance, wit and insight one looks for in ... editorial pages in their ideal state," as Chief Editorial LiveJournalist James Howard Gibbons once put it.
BLOGVERSATION: Lose an Eye, It's a Sport.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/11/08 11:25 PM | Print |
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