Stories of global warming and starvation in our trash cans

The way that we view food in the developed and relatively prosperous countries is so strikingly different from how it is viewed in the portions of the world that face rampant starvation. Case in point:

According to a guide presented by the Environmental Protection Agency in cooperation with Department of Agriculture, “… more than a quarter of all food produced for human consumption in America is currently discarded.” Findings in a recently launched detailed study in the UK confirm the magnitude of the wastage and provide a number of details. For instance, one third of the food bought is thrown away. (source)

It has long been controversial that all of this perfectly good food is being wasted while people are starving. I’ve had conversations with people about this and they’ll often vaguely defend our practices by bringing up how expensive it would be to transport the food to the people who need it. This article from the New York Times’ Freakonomics blog called my attention to the fact that discarded food produces methane gas, which is twenty times worse as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

So not only are we wasting food while people are starving, but the rotting food is destroying our planet!