American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It)

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American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It) Pub. Date: 8/30/2011 Publisher: Da Capo Press
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American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It) Pub. Date: 10/12/2010 Publisher: Da Capo Press

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Overview

Grocery prices and the forsaken foods at the back of your fridge seem to increase weekly. After reading American Wasteland, you will never look at your shopping list, refrigerator, plate, or wallet the same way again. Jonathan Bloom wades into the garbage heap to unearth what our squandered food says about us, why it matters, and how you can make a difference starting in your own kitchen—reducing waste and saving money. Interviews with experts such as chef Alice Waters and food psychologist Brian Wansink, among others, uncover not only how and why we waste, but, most importantly, what we can do about it.

Winner of the 2011 IACP Cookbook Award for Food Matters

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Since the Great Depression and the world wars, the American attitude toward food has gone from a "use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without" patriotic and parsimonious duty to an orgy of "grab-and-go" where food's fetish and convenience qualities are valued above sustainability or nutrition. Journalist Bloom follows the trajectory of America's food from gathering to garbage bin in this compelling and finely reported study, examining why roughly half of our harvest ends up in landfills or rots in the field. He accounts for every source of food waste, from how it is picked, purchased, and tossed in fear of being past inscrutable "best by" dates. Bloom's most interesting point is psychological: we have trained ourselves to regard food as a symbol of American plenty that should be available at all seasons and times, and in dizzying quantities. "Current rates of waste and population growth can't coexist much longer," he warns and makes smart suggestions on becoming individually and collectively more food conscious "to keep our Earth and its inhabitants physically and morally healthy." (Nov.)

Kirkus Reviews

An eye-opening account of what used to be considered a sin—the willful waste of perfectly edible food.

That waste, writes journalist Bloom, is enough to fill the 90,000-seat Rose Bowl stadium each day—by a conservative estimate, half a pound of food per American per day. "How we reached the point where most people waste more than their body weight...each year in food is a complicated tale," he writes, and so it is. Food waste is a matter of individual decisions. We determine when and what to buy, stocking too-large refrigerators and too-capacious pantries with oversized containers of food that cannot possibly be consumed before they go bad. By Bloom's calculation, anywhere from a quarter to half of the food we buy is tossed away, costing hundreds and even thousands of dollars a year. Yet many of the decisions that result in that waste are beyond our control, made somewhere between farm and fork by corporate powers that, it would appear, consider waste a species of planned obsolescence. The environmental results alone are appalling, writes the author. It takes 15 tons of water to produce a kilogram of red meat, to say nothing of the energy, land and carbon emissions produced by large-scale agriculture. Bloom is full of condemnation without being unduly scolding, though he seems dour and dire at times: "Limiting waste requires patience, effort, and food knowledge," he writes. "While these used to be common American traits, that is less true today." Completely eliminating food waste is an unlikely scenario, he writes, but reducing it is not—it can be taught, just as the present generations have been taught, quite successfully, to recycle.

Refreshingly, Bloom offers solutions as well as jeremiads, and not a minute too soon—an urgent, necessary book.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780738215280
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Publication date: 8/30/2011
Pages: 384
Sales rank: 335,911
Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Jonathan Bloom is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe. He lives with his wife and son in Durham, North Carolina. Visit: WastedFood.com

Introduction xi

1 Waste from Farm to Fork 1

2 Does Food Waste Really Matter? Why You Should Care 13

3 The Disgrace of Plenty: The Coexistence of Hunger and Food Waste 41

4 A Culture of Waste: Our Fall from Thrift and Our Imminent Return 59

5 American Farms: Growing Waste, Selling Perfection 91

6 Waste on the Menu 117

7 A Cold Case of Waste 147

8 Home Is Where the Waste Is 183

9 The Obstacles and Art of Food Recovery 215

10 From Traylessness to Demand Tracking:Ideas and Innovations to Reduce Food Waste 239

11 Great, Britain! A Kingdom United in Hating Waste 263

12 If I Were the King of the Forest: Big Changes 29

Acknowledgments 309

Notes 313

Resources 337

Appendix A How to Avoid Waste and Save Money 343

Appendix B Produce Storage Guide 349

Index 351

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