od wastage is made worse if we don’t store foods properly
How often have you thrown away foods which went off because they weren’t stored correctly? Perhaps your cereal went stale because the box wasn’t closed, or maybe the milk turned sour when you left it out by the kettle. If the fruit in your fruit bowl always goes moldy before you can eat it, keep it in the fridge – it’ll last for days longer. Yes, the
Supermarkets employed about 2.5 million people in 2008, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics. That means about 3.25 billion pounds of food waste from supermarkets was sent to the landfill in 2008, or the weight of more than 200,000 elephants
“Right now, the supermarket mindset is to always have more than enough. And, if that’s the case you’re always going to have stuff that you’re throwing out, or hopefully donating or composting,” says Jonathan Bloom, author of “American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food.”
Despite the Food Donation Act, some grocery stores still may be hesitant to donate more food items in general, because they don’t want shoppers to be discouraged by how much food they are giving away, Bloom says
We generally want to stick by expiration dates, especially with baby food where there can be nutrient loss, Bucknavage explains. But, we have more leeway with “sell-by” and “best-if-used-by” dates. Stores generally try to get rid of all foods nearing their sell-by date, because generally those foods won’t sell. Yet, a customer can still get a lot of value out of products beyond the sell-by date.