On average, Americans weigh 20 pounds more than they did back in 1974. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
Americans’ waistlines have been
expanding for decades. But new
research suggests at the same time,
more and more food is going to waste.
Shawn Allee reports:
Transcript
Americans’ waistlines have been
expanding for decades. But new
research suggests at the same time,
more and more food is going to waste.
Shawn Allee reports:
On average, Americans weigh 20 pounds more than they did back in 1974.
But Kevin Hall found there’s more to the story. He studies nutrition at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Hall’s research revealed we produce more food to keep up with our bigger appetites, but he also found we’re wasting more.
“We were kinda shocked to see that the rate of increase of food supply was greater than the rate of increase of food consumption we calculated. Somewhere along the supply chain from the farm to the dinner table, that food was wasted.”
Kevin Hall estimates well more than one third of our food production goes to waste.
He says it’s not clear who’s to blame, but someone should find out because food production uses a lot of water and fuel.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.