Food Waste is the Dumbest Problem in the World

I have watched some of the Vox and Climate Lab videos, and really feel the food waste video has been really on my mind. I also saw the films Just Eat It and Wasted! The Story of Food Waste, which is amazing at showing the problems with food waste.  Still, I feel the food waste issue is the dumbest problem in the world as this has the easiest solution.  We as a society need to eat less and produce less.  If we produce the same amount or more, we can feed billions more people with only the food that would go to waste.

Back to my own life, I have tried to use every part of food that I can and waste very little but there are always some parts that stump me.  When I buy food, I try to buy as little as possible but some times you can only buy big packages because they only provide that.  Is that normal?  No, because if we look at our parents and grandparents generations, they wasted much less food but even ate less.  My parents always say, my parents told us we can't leave the table until we are done all our food.  Nowadays, we say it is fine if you can't finish the food, we will throw that food out if you don't want to take that with you.

Where does this leave us?  We as a whole society are wasting more food, and eating more.  Why is this happening?  One big problem is that companies say how much food we should be eating not the health professionals, who research years on the issue.  The other reason is that, more people are not actually cooking food but going to restaurants, and using food delivery apps which allow people to be lazy.  When this happens, do people really care where their food is coming from, for almost all people, they don't really care as long as they get fed.

There is so much waste throughout the system of food production but the biggest waste is with the people who buy and eat the food.  Some people say "We need to go buy food", 25 years ago, we would go to smaller groceries stores, and now we go to bigger groceries and have much bigger sizes.  When the sizes increase, there is more waste that comes throughout the whole system.  Yet, if we are more connected to our food system, most of us will ask more questions about what we are eating.

We are all pushed away further and further from our food systems in recent years.  There is a huge movement from all sides to stop food waste, yet you can eat food from local Food Not Bombs chapters or from dumpster diving or opening garbage bags near any food provider.  For most people, they could drive down their food costs to zero with all these outlets plus more.  This is how much food is wasted in countries around the world.

Going back to my family, I see that my family ask more questions about what they are eating, which food we buy and where the food is from.  Most of this, is myself but I know my family understands most of that, even if they get annoyed by me.  We need to research where our food is coming from, and when we do that, we can fight food waste.