Food Waste and Poverty: How can we help?

After watching the film A Place At The Table it made me take a step back and really think about the concern of food waste and poverty in the United States. The sad part is that many of us contribute to food waste and don’t think anything of it. I will be the first to admit that yes I am guilty of going to the grocery store and not finishing all the food I buy. It goes out of date gets bad and I end up throwing it away. I will also admit that when I go to the grocery store if a fruit or vegetable does not look how I think it is supposed to I won’t buy it. 

Sadly, I have been very picky with the food I buy and eat. But after learning about where food waste goes as well as all the people that can’t even afford to put a meal on their table for them and their family, it really made me open my eyes and think about  how I’ve been dealing with food my whole life.

Some people throw away food because they buy too much or not buy food because it doesn’t fulfill their visual expectations. However there are instances where people value food differently due to past experiences. For example, my best friends grandparents were in a Japanese concentration camp in Indonesia when they were younger. They had to catch birds, toads and many other things that many of us would never want to eat or kill. But they were willing to do anything and eat anything in order to put food in front of themselves and survive. As they grew older and whenever my friend would go visit them in Florida he noticed how strict they were about wasting food. His grandparents always announced that no one could leave the table until their plates were left with no food on it. So the family learned very quickly to always take a little bit of food and could always go back for more if they were still hungry. If there were leftovers, they would freeze the food, save it for a meal the next day or feed it to their dog. But there was no way that any food in their house was going into the garbage.

According to Feeding America, “41 million people struggle with hunger in the United States, including 13 million children. In 2015, 5.4 million seniors struggled to afford enough to eat.” Food waste is a topic that individuals who are well off or the individuals who are able to consistently put food on their tables are people who most likely don’t really tend to think to much about food waste. But as we all know, these actions most definitely impact the less fortunate. So not only are people throwing food out but it is our local grocery stores as well. According to The Washington Post, “Each year about 40 percent of food in the United States goes uneaten” Instead of people donating foods they may not eat to food banks to help people out, it ends up in landfills which is also negatively effecting our environment. Another issue is that the less fortunate individuals or families tend to become over weight or obese. Now this may sound weird because they don’t have any food. But the problem is that when they do have money to go get a few things at the grocery store its not enough to buy them the foods with good nutritional value. They only have enough for the cheap bag of chips, candy, soda, or processed foods, which in the long run will lead to health problems for them and their children.

I would like to relate the topic of food waste and poverty to the song “We Are The World” By Michael Jackson. This song was originally produced to help fundraise money in order to help feed the hungry people in Africa, which is amazing. This song not only brought many talented artists together but also helped bring together people all over the world. The main course of this song is, “We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day so lets start giving.”

 Not only this course but also the overarching theme of the whole song can relate to food waste and poverty because the people around us, as well as ourselves are all that we have. Although it may be embarrassing for individuals to rely on others for support and access to food, they wouldn’t be able to get through it if it wasn’t for the kind people who lend a hand to help. With everyone being able to come together to help put a stop to the crazy numbers of food waste, help the families who do not have enough money to buy healthy food and in the end save lives, not only in the United States but all over the world we can only make a difference by coming together to help put a stop to hunger and poverty.

To start, what can we do within our own community to help decrease the number of food waste and help those in need consistently put food on their table?

In terms of how I believe I can personally help put a stop to food waste is to stop buying things I really don’t need from the grocery store. I will start making a list of things that I need to have in order to make myself a healthy breakfast lunch and dinner. That way I won’t be throwing away food that I thought looked good in the store and ends up in my garbage a week later. I will also stop eating out. This way it will make me eat the food that I already have at my house before it goes bad. Because I won’t be buying as much food or eating out, I will have a lot more money than I usually do because I won’t be buying as much food. With that money I would want to put together my own small organization to get the word out about food waste and poverty. Through this organization, I plan to get the word out in the Parkland Community. Once we build a solid group, I want to start collecting and donating food to the less fortunate as well as point them into the right direction of where they can get more help. When it comes down to it, it’s all about getting the word out. If people are not aware of how serious these problems are, they won't know how to help.

Katie Coronado 

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