Americans Throw Out 40 Percent of Their Food

Our happy hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.

Forty percent of all the food produced in the United States is wasted.

Previous studies, based on interviewing people about their eating habits, pegged the percentage of food that goes uneaten at closer to 30 percent. In order to arrive at a more scientific accounting of food waste, researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases compared the difference between the total U.S. food supply and what actually gets eaten. They computed the latter figure using metabolism charts and average body weights across the nation.

All this wasted food adds up to 1,400 calories per person per day, which, the scientists say, is 50 percent more food than we tossed out in 1974.

Perhaps not coincidentally, 1974 was right around when the old "Clean your plate because kids are starving in Japan"-guilt trip lost any lingering remnants of credibility.

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