Beth Radow, chair of the LWVNYS committee on energy, agriculture and the environment has prepared a BE EARTHWISE guide for you to VOTE with your consumer dollars and daily practices, to toss less food and feed more people while saving money and our natural resources.
Food Waste constitutes the third largest contributor to global warming. Discarded food also wastes the water, labor, and fuel used to produce and transport that food. One third of the food grown globally does not get consumed. An estimated 40% of the food people purchase in the U.S.A. gets tossed. Annually, that amounts to $165 billion and over $2,000 for a family of four.
More than 820 million people worldwide live with chronic food deprivation. Food insecurity includes the continuum from famine, hunger, food deprivation and malnutrition to nutritional deficiencies from eating empty calories. In America and New York State, one in every seven people experiences food insecurity in one form or another. The 1 in 7 statistic varies from county to county. According to Feeding America, approximately 2.3 million people or 12% of
New York’s population experience a challenge feeding themselves and their loved ones.
Food insecurity can affect the people we interact with every day and we may not even know it: older adults living on a fixed income, the three out of four working Americans living paycheck to paycheck, college students living on a budget, and our children. America has an abundance of healthy foods. By wasting less food, we can nourish ourselves and our neighbors and sustain the environment at the same time.
Source: LWVNYS
