Food and hunger in America

October, November and December. The last quarter of the year brings with it quite a few holidays and as a result many opportunities for family and friends to get together and celebrate, to enjoy each other's company and to party.

When I think about families and friends spending time together, I often think of all the less fortunate people out there, the ones that have nothing to celebrate and no food or drink to celebrate with.

It is estimated that the planet currently grows enough food to feed at least ten billion people comfortably. I think that number is an extreme underestimation. I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that not a single person in America starves because not enough food is produced.

There are places where farmers are literally paid to burn thousands of tons of produce rather than to have it shipped somewhere else that it is actually needed.

Places like McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and other popular fast food chains  have quality rules set in place where after a certain amount of time they are required to throw away food that is no longer "fresh". Depending on what the items are the time is generally between ten and twenty minutes. They are not allowed to give the food to their employees or even to local homeless people. Or even sell it at a discounted rate due to its lack of freshness. They are required to waste it. And even if only an average of  1 pound per restaurant per day is wasted in this fashion,(and this is an extremely conservative estimate) there are 160,000 fast food restaurants in the US alone. That is not including other types of restaurants and would still add up to nearly 30 thousand tons of wasted food each year.

Grocery stores often turn away produce trucks if they do not like the look of the produce. Then the drivers of those trucks have to try to find somewhere else that will take the food off their hands. Often it ends up simply getting dumped.

It is  estimated that between ten and twenty five percent of the food that consumers in America purchase is wasted, due to uneaten leftovers or food that goes bad before it gets cooked. Focusing on changing this one statistic could go a long way towards feeding all of the hungry in this country.

Economic conditions in our country are not as good currently as they have been in years past. And yes there is poverty, even here in America. But I can't help but think the real problem here is greed and inefficiency.

The average American eats just under 2,000 lbs or 1 ton of food per year. There are a little over 300 million people in America. And currently, 1 in 6, or 50 million are struggling with the inability to provide enough food for themselves to eat. An extra 50 million tons of food per year would feed the hungry within our country. And I firmly believe that there is at least that amount of surplus food here that is going to waste each year.

The food already exists to feed our hungry. How do we find better ways of getting it to them?