Study: Lack of education main reason so much food thrown out in U.S.

Marge Danser still feels pangs about “the great freezer debacle.”

Two years ago she opened the freezer in her Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment and faced a pile of long-frozen packages of meat – about $20 worth. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to get rid of all this’,” Danser said. “But I felt so guilty.”

Into the trash it went.

And so Danser contributed – however reluctantly – to the massive amount of food wasted in America.

New research shows the problem stretches all the way from production on farms (29 percent waste in the citrus industry) through retail (26 percent waste of convenience store food) to the average American household, which wastes about 14 percent of food purchases.

“The really shocking thing,” said anthropologist Timothy Jones, who directed the study for the University of Arizona’s Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, is that 15 percent of that household’s waste is still “perfectly good, packaged, edible food, not out of date. It’s just people doing cabinet cleaning.”

In Danser’s case, those freezer-chapped meats probably could have been used. Freezer burn, a discoloration due to moisture evaporation, “doesn’t change edibility at all,” Jones said. “A freezer-burned roast can be cut up for stew.”

Danser and her fiancé, Robert Segarra, enjoy cooking and eat at home most nights. Though they waste less food now through careful planning and shopping, Danser still faces frustrations.

“Like when I need a teaspoon full of an ingredient, but have to buy a large amount” due to packaging, she said. “Then I end up storing the rest, and finding it later and thinking, I’ll never use this again, and pitching it.”

Jones has studied the issue for 20 years, sometimes literally on his knees in commercial trash bins or up to his elbows in family garbage cans.

At one point in the latest study, sponsored in part by the U.S. Agriculture Department, some 35 team members were analyzing garbage, questioning families and food managers, contemplating all aspects of how items end up in the trash.

Jones said a main reason for waste is “a massive lack of education about food, where it comes from, how to handle it, and when it goes bad.”

He has written to heads of several large corporations with simple ideas for cutting waste. So far, he said, no response.

“For very little money they could institute training programs, reanalyze storage needs and dramatically reduce food loss – probably in half or more,” Jones said.

Waste is especially problematic for convenience stores that sell prepared, warm-to-go foods. At the crux is quality assurance – “throwing out the coffee every 20 minutes, because customers expect fresh coffee,” said Jeff Lenard, spokesman for the National Association of Convenience Stores. The group, based in Alexandria, Va., represents more than half the country’s 130,000 shops and chains.

Lenard said one successful waste-reduction program was instituted by Kwik Trip, based in LaCrosse, Wis. With better planning, storage and special ripening rooms, the chain reduced banana waste from as much as 50 percent in 1991 to less than 3 percent today.

So much edible waste goes into Dumpsters outside stores and restaurants that Adam Weissman of Hackensack, N.J., hasn’t had to purchase food for years. He and other “Freegans,” who forage nationwide, exist solely on what others discard.

“Frankly, we find more than we could ever eat ourselves,” said Weissman, 26. Just gathering discarded food in his neighborhood, “on any given day, I could probably walk away with enough produce to feed my entire apartment building” – a 12-story structure. He recently found two 24-cubic-foot Dumpsters full of fresh produce, “some slightly bruised” but edible.

Freegans opt out of the consumer culture, Weissman explained, believing “the economy is totally at odds with sustainable or ethical values in society. Once things can’t be sold, they’re not seen as valuable.”

Weissman has claimed baked goods, prepared foods, uneaten foods from buffets – all thrown away several times daily. He checks for spoilage by examining the food, and said he has yet to become ill.

“People find that baffling,” he said. “But how do you know when something is safe to eat in your fridge? You do the same thing, you look and smell and taste.”

To Jones, the Freegans “simply illustrate the amount of food that is thrown away.” What is “really obvious” from his research, he said, is that “Americans at all phases have just simply lost touch with their food.”

“Every school should have a garden, let students grow food, harvest and eat it,” Jones said. “It gets them back to what food is, and they gain appreciation for it.”