Why Americans Waste So Much Food
Most people feel guilty about discarding food, but say it would be hard to stop.
Even though American consumers throw away about 80 billion pounds of food a year, only about half of them are aware that food waste is a problem. Even more, researchers have identified that most people perceive benefits to throwing food away, some of which have only limited basis in fact.
A study published today in PLOS ONE is just the second peer-reviewed large-scale consumer survey about food waste and is the first in the U.S. to identify patterns regarding how Americans form attitudes on food waste.
The results provide the data required to develop targeted efforts to reduce the amount of food that U.S. consumers toss into the garbage each year, said study co-author Brian Roe, the McCormick Professor of Agricultural Marketing and Policy in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at The Ohio State University. Read more...