Hunger and waste

I think that everyone who needs food suffers. I have gotten into the habit of picking up my plate and licking it clean, when I can't get up the rest with a fork. Drives my mother nuts, but I just explain that if we took all the "stuff" off a plate that we could not get with a fork, we could probably fill lake Huron or more, every single day, thus I am not going to waste one little bit of food, no matter how it looks when I lick my plate.

Oh my that really is a waste. WHich is why I think many restaurants should make their portions smaller and their prices cheaper! That way we won't be eating for two and spending money on the gym. To answer your question, I think that they all suffer. You can't just say that one suffers more than the other because you're an outsider to their suffering.

Pose123 - very pertinent topic. I was brought up to abhor waste. And I still do and would encourage my children to follow the maxim "waste not - want not". The reality is quite different. From the farm to storage to packing and by the time food gets to retailers a good 20% gets wasted. In developing countries where the farm to market systems are less efficient an estimated 35% gets wasted. Wastage at the table, in the kitchen, in the refrigerator, larder are all things well within our control and diligent people do pay attention to it. For the individual - it is hard to see the correlation between wasting 50 grams of food per meal to world hunger. My grandmother used to say - you waste 50 grams per meal and it adds up a hundred grams a day, 700 grams a week. This adds up to about 36 kilos a year - enough to feed a couple of people for a month. Think of all the poor people in Africa!! she used to say. The co-relation between personal wastage and food shortage becomes easier to calculate if we think like this. My town has 30,000 families that waste at least 100 grams per family per day. That is a whopping 300 kilos a day!!! Wastage control begins with oneself! If every mylotter decided to eliminate the 100 grams of wastage attributed per day then we are looking at savings of 1000+ kilos!!! That is so much less demand which when aggregated will depress prices. Yes - each of us can make a difference - and no saving is too small.

Well, I think everyone with no exception suffers ,but probably mothers with several kids are the ones who suffer the most.

Yes food does get thrown away every day, and not only in the US, every country has this problem and it is very sad. The thing I don't agree on is the number, 96 billion, I guess it must be 96 million, because if it is 96 billion it would mean about 300 pounds of food thrown away for every citizen of the US.

Too many people are wasteful and too many people are starvig , and right infront of us too ! Just so sad and uncalled for . I think that everyone that is hungry is suffering . I dont know which type of person wate the most . I have friends from all over the world and sometimes they go days with no food

It is a sad fact that this happens. It just isn't food it it boxes of goods from the stores that get thrown away as well. They call them damaged goods and there is really nothing wrong with them. I guess the tax write off is better than what they would get by giving it to charity. I don't know nor do I get why this happens. I have heard that the reason the stores throw out their food is because of fear of getting sued if they gave it away should someone claim or if they did get sick from it. To many sue happy people in my opinion has caused some of this to happen. I know people that buy new stuff and would rather throw the old into the trash than give it away. Stuff that still works like toys, TV's, computers. It is crazy and even crazier is some of the stuff is still new in the package. I am to thrifty to be able to do that. I might throw away old clothes or broken toys but never something that I think someone else could use. The waste at fast food restaurants also got me. I don't know about now but when I was a teen many many years ago we were always throwing out burgers and I would think about all the hungry people in the world. It really killed me to throw out all that food. I just don't see how it will ever be changed though.