Food Waste

Food Waste
In the educational documentary “The Big Waste”, four chefs were split into two teams. They were assigned the task of creating a high quality meal for one hundred people using only what was considered garbage from bakeries, grocery stores, meat processors, and farms. In the process of gathering the food waste, the chefs were shocked by how picky Americans had become about food. The show shed some light on how much food was wasted in America, not only on a personal level, but on a national level as well. The amount of food waste generated was mind blowing, and not only that, but the food that was considered waste was astonishing because most of it is completely edible.  
On the chefs journey to find edible garbage they discussed food waste with all types of food handlers. Some of the most outstanding numbers came from the restaurant industries. Restaurants are a huge industry in America and their contribution to the nation’s food waste should not go unnoticed. It is estimated that 27 million tons of food is thrown away every year by restaurants (The Big Waste).
When a local Pizza Hut store manager was asked what he thought about food waste he responded, “The amount of our food waste is just a reflection of how discriminative we are when it comes to using quality products for our customers”.   This type of reasoning seems questionable when we know how much food is actually wasted annually by restaurants.
Later in an interview with the same manager, he revealed that the corporation that runs his store and 7,600 others in America expects that 1.5% of food that is received at each store will be wasted. 1.5% of the food seems reasonable, however when you consider the 7,599 other stores that are wasting 1.5% of their food, the numbers add up quickly. For example, the local Pizza Hut store wasted 13.89 pounds of cheese last week, which the manager says is a low number. If every store wastes 14 pounds of cheese a week that’s 2,700 tons of cheese per year...