Half of all food produced on earth is never eaten. British supermarkets refuse food that looks ugly. - Polidicks

at the shop i work at we throw out about £2500 a week in waste. 90% of which is completely fine and edible. we fill a dumpster to the brim every single week. the worst part is company policy says that staff can't even take any home. either for free or at a reduced price. it's a complete shambles

Weird. In Pret A Manger (UK) everything that's sold is made the same day it's sold, so nothing stays overnight and is always fresh. However, at the end of the day, everything that's not sold is either taken by charities in town or by the workers themselves.

[QUOTE=Crhem van der B;39172052]Weird. In Pret A Manger (UK) everything that's sold is made the same day it's sold, so nothing stays overnight and is always fresh. However, at the end of the day, everything that's not sold is either taken by charities in town or by the workers themselves.[/QUOTE] I remember hearing about this on the news, apparently they are one of very few companies that do give their unsold food away. Apparently other companies have sacked people for doing so.

This story reminds me of something that was mentioned at our local Aboriginal land council when I was a child; it goes something like this: "The Noongar calendar year is divided into six seasons and determined by the weather patterns. The seasons tell us which animal and plant resources are plentiful at those times. It is an important part of Noongar custom to take only what you need from nature in order to keep it healthy and maintain biodiversity. By eating foods when they are abundant and in season, natural resources are not depleted and will still be available for the next year." [URL="http://www.noongarculture.org.au/culture-and-maps/food.aspx#iv"]Source[/URL] The Aboriginal Australians were pretty good with this kind of stuff. :)

This is what has been pissing me right the fuck off for years, Ever since I saw that picture of massive mounds of corn and grain rotting while being "guarded", I have had a bad taste in my mouth. For fucks sakes money is ridiculous, its the only reason we still have world hunger. We can feed and house and teach everyone, but fuck it, lets just keep pretending that we can't because there is a fiscal cliff and because we have scarcity of resources.

[QUOTE=Zenreon117;39172308]This is what has been pissing me right the fuck off for years, Ever since I saw that picture of massive mounds of corn and grain rotting while being "guarded", I have had a bad taste in my mouth. For fucks sakes money is ridiculous, its the only reason we still have world hunger. We can feed and house and teach everyone, but fuck it, lets just keep pretending that we can't because there is a fiscal cliff and because we have scarcity of resources.[/QUOTE] Uh, finite resources and humans having unlimited want are both impossible to get rid of.

We live in a world about perfection, the beautiful are praised and the ugly are looked down upon, ignored. Food is no different.

[QUOTE=Zenreon117;39172308]This is what has been pissing me right the fuck off for years, Ever since I saw that picture of massive mounds of corn and grain rotting while being "guarded", I have had a bad taste in my mouth. For fucks sakes money is ridiculous, its the only reason we still have world hunger. We can feed and house and teach everyone, but fuck it, lets just keep pretending that we can't because there is a fiscal cliff and because we have scarcity of resources.[/QUOTE] It's insane that people live in cities where they fall victim to every business profiting off of their family until they can barely afford to live and then still shriek at the idea of a controlled economy. If the government controlled our country's purchasing, processing, and manufacturing of petroleum product I don't think they would price gouge us the way the big oil companies do. They would profit in a form much like taxation (A very massive amount of money that otherwise leaves our country for the most part) for providing the necessary service to the country. They would hire American citizens who would likely see more of the money than they otherwise do at a privately owned company and get better benefits. When alternative fuels come, rather than having to slay the anti-legislative action spurred by massively funded lobbying, they could simply phase out the program and transition into another. If the private market sold non necessities and the government sold necessities, I think that capitalism could possibly become something beneficial to a nation the size of the US. Right now, there is too much staunch opposition against progress for the sake of maintaining profit from the massive tumors that have grown in our economy. I think money should exist, but only if it's value is taken out of the hands of companies who clearly do not understand the concept and only hear 'profit' instead. Products need to be defined on value. If the company can't afford to produce crazy new shit because they can't mark it up 400%, then the economy isn't at a level to support it.

Eh, it's impossible to eat everything you buy, and it's impossible to sell everything you produce. Is this really that awful? [editline]10th January 2013[/editline] It's just a consequence of the consumer system.

I work at a Dunkin Donuts and it really makes me upset how many doughnuts are thrown away every evening. On slow days sometimes hundreds are thrown right into a trash compactor. The owner does not wish to donate them because there may be a possibility of lawsuit if somebody gets a food illness.

I work in the dairy department at my local store, and you guys are exactly right. Whenever things go bad, we have to pull them from the shelves and process them as damages (which is my job). Due to the perishable nature of most of the stuff in my department, a lot of stuff gets thrown out each month. It's sad, but it isn't our choice. Selling "expired" food poses a legal liability for us, and it may be a health code violation (they're sticklers for that, we can get in trouble for so much as storing boxes on the ground instead of on a palet). As for not over-stocking, it's easier said than done. The store I work at is huge, and the only large one in the area, so we need to order a lot. If only a few items from each shelf go bad, we're still left with a lot of waste.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;39172517]Uh, finite resources and humans having unlimited want are both impossible to get rid of.[/QUOTE] Unlimited want isn't. We live in a culture that encourages unlimited want. We tell nearly every kid in elementary school that at one point they could be President. We tell them that if they work hard, they'll have a mansion and lots of cars (which is good) or live in a shack (which is bad). We educate our kids to be aesthetically shallow. We teach them legends of American success in black and white terms that either alienate them from the culture or integrate them into believing a history that we later tell them is false [I]if[/I] they go to a college that isn't politically opposed to acknowledging the entirety of American History. The majority of kids aren't going to attend a college history class on American History, so a vast majority of Americans grew up with incredibly unrealistic beliefs about American history, which are widely diversified based on whether you are being taught in an area where Americans battled each other. You couple this ignorance of the actual history of our economy and what our founding fathers and their successors believed with the massive, sudden growth of massive companies with their pricing checked only by whether people can afford their products and whether others are willing to sell it cheaper and you pretty much get the situation we are in today. The vast majority of American citizens are completely ill-informed about our history; not because we lied to them, but because we simply never bothered to hold ourselves to teaching them. Morality and religion got in the way of objective truth, and a lot of kids throughout our history were horribly misinformed on History and science. These kids then grew up, and are the adults and young adults of today's society. If we could see what we are doing wrong and intercede at the educational level to hold every school to factual historical standards rather than stories past the third grade, then we might begin to be able to produce adults who are actually equipped to deal with the American life. We need to stop raising consumers, and start raising people who come out with political identity. I'd also suggest abolishing the parties, because as long as those exist, parents will always insist on their right to lie to their children and have their children believe their lies. It's not impossible, but it is the complete opposite direction of where we are going and we need to figure out how to turn it around, or we never will. The proliferation of lies and misinformation as 'personal truth' is the most morally inexcusable thing I can think of in American society because it creates most of the strife.

Haha my mate told me once that when he was working in the bakery section or whatever at his work, he'd occasionally grab a few doughnuts every now and again when they had to be taken off the shelves. No point in letting them go to waste, as long as he didn't get caught. It's a ridiculous idea I know, but supermarkets should let employees take away products that need to be taken off of shelves.

[QUOTE=FreakyMe;39172997]Unlimited want isn't.[/QUOTE] Yes it is, or at least, it immense. If people suddenly switched to your "common sense" way of consuming things, the economy would collapse. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill[/url]

That's kinda odd when you think about the world itself then just one place, if half the world food is never eating and being wasted, why am i still hearing about the starving children of africa and other news that is almost related to that?

[QUOTE=darkedone02;39173234]That's kinda odd when you think about the world itself then just one place, if half the world food is never eating and being wasted, why am i still hearing about the starving children of africa and other news that is almost related to that?[/QUOTE] Transportation is a major issue.

The movie DIVE! is about living off of thrown away food. [img]http://images.moviepostershop.com/dive-movie-poster-2010-1020672323.jpg[/img] Its on Netfilx I recommend it. Back when my dad was a kid he often got "Trash food" and fed it to his farm animals but his local store would bag it up separately and leave it out back of the store for people to take.

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;39170071] Are they allowed to take it for themselves at their own risk? I might be getting a job at a supermarket soon, I'd gladly take the mildly imperfect stuff that nobody wants.[/QUOTE] I work in the produce section of a grocery store, and that is something they expressly tell you you cannot do, primarily for two reasons. The first is you eat the stuff and get sick. While most people wouldn't there might be one or two somewhere who would try to sue for money. I mean, if you were stuck working for minimum wage the rest of your life, and then you had the opportunity at suing for a large amount of money, some people might take it. Secondly, they would have to worry about employees pulling down items from the shelf that, while they aren't perfect, would definitely sell, just for themselves. With the stuff I throw out in produce, I would never have to shop for vegetables or fruit if I could this.

I ate some spam that was five years out of date once, it tasted perfectly fine

We throw maybe £100 - £200 of produce a day at the supermarket I work at, though most of that is out-of-date cut flowers and poor quality stuff. But we've had weeks were we've had to throw away £10,000 as a store, and after this Christmas we had to throw away around 500kg of carrots, because the depo screwed up and sent us way too many. Our food waste doesn't go to landfill any more though, now it gets recycled into fuel, which is something I guess.

[QUOTE=Camundongo;39174735]and after this Christmas we had to throw away around 500kg of carrots, because the depo screwed up and sent us way too many.[/QUOTE] At no point in this did anyone suggest seeing if a food bank wanted it? Or hell, even a zoo?

The reason they throw it out is because all it takes is ONE customer getting sick on a "best before" accident and that's a lot of money gone. Yes, most things are perfectly edible way past the best before date(with a few exceptions). It's just companies covering their asses, can't blame them for it. Why food that is thrown away isn't give to homeless people though, i will never know.

[QUOTE=Ishwoo;39169789]My mate says how the supermarket he works at throws out like £7,000 worth of food every month because the packaging gets a dent in it or it goes a day over sell-by. [I]They're not allowed to give it to homeless people either in case they get ill and sue them [/I]:/[/QUOTE] Contract & clause? And then give it to homeless shelters. [QUOTE=The golden;39169998]Why not take the soon-to-be expired stuff and the food that doesn't look marketable and then sell it at some sort of bargain location for [I]super[/I] cheap prices. [/QUOTE] Unless it's things that go bad REALLY quickly (milk for example) then that's actually what they do at the "discount supermarket" my brother works at. I often get snacks off him that were destined for the trash because it's 1 day over the expiration date.

I don't wanna have another one of these posts, but I ate 2 year old expired granola bars, and they tasted great. No sickness.

[QUOTE=Ishwoo;39169789]My mate says how the supermarket he works at throws out like £7,000 worth of food every month because the packaging gets a dent in it or it goes a day over sell-by. [b]They're not allowed to give it to homeless people either in case they get ill and sue them :/[/b][/QUOTE] Well that's just backwards.

Why don't companies that make the aforementioned '2 minute meals' which happen to contain vegetables in them simply buy up all of the aesthetically unpleasing vegetables that nobody else will buy given that in their meals they'll wind up in chunk form anyway so you're not gonna have to stare at a misshapen, 'offensive' potato that looks like an enormous, erect penis before it's prepared?

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn4Frslsq8M[/media]

This is so sad, the Whole Food store in the nearby city always gives their leftover baked goods and other food to the homeless, I can't believe stores would refuse to give food away because it has a tiny dent in it, ect.

I used to work at a Pizza Hut in a Target and our pizzas had to be thrown out after being on display for 20 minutes. Couldn't eat em, give em to employees, sell em at a reduced price, etc. According to the store policy, after 20 minutes they were considered "expired" and therefore couldn't be sold. Absolutely required to have two of each out at any time. We prepped 130 pizzas per day, usually threw out 40-60 of them.

I fucked up to produce that much food and still have people starving in this world. [editline]10th January 2013[/editline] *it's