Wasted: Jonathan Bloom talks food waste.

November 12th at Borders in downtown Washington D.C., I spent my Friday night listening to Jonathan Bloom, author of American Wasteland, discuss the rarely talked about issue of food waste in this country. Not a surprise to anyone really—we live in a society that wastes nearly everything. We have such an abundance of stuff that it loses value and importance. Food falls right into this category; we have an obscene amount of cheap food (Thank you, government subsidies!) at our fingertips at any given moment, between grocery stores, restaurants, convenient stores, and vending machines. Dropping a half eaten bag of chips in the trash doesn’t seem like such a big deal if you can always buy another for less than a dollar in the next twenty minutes if you change your mind.

Bloom explained that when he started to investigate the amount and manner in which food is wasted on a daily basis, he began to write about it in—wait for it—a blog. Upon sharing his ideas with the Executive Director of the New York Times, Jack Rosenthol responded with: “Hm, interesting—why do I care?” Bloom found himself stumped—why shouldn’t you care?!—But realized his challenge: how could he convince people to care.

Bloom took the standard three-fold approach to argue his case: Environmental, Ethical and Economic. His research methods were also three-fold: Traditional Journalism, Immersion Journalism, and Experimental Journalism. Traditional journalism is the typical process of research, gathering statistics, and interviews. Immersion journalism offered a personal stake in the matter as Bloom entered the work force in the food industry, including: the produce department at a supermarket, an organic farm, a fast food restaurant, etc. Finally, experimental journalism brought it home—as he candidly states this means going out to eat at a lot of different places.

With his personal experience on various levels and areas with the industry and communities in the country, Blooms narrative is honest, entertaining, and eye opening. At the book discussion he covered the themes of his new book, shining light on everything from the food thrown out and consumed at all-you-can-eat buffets, the expiration dates on food (p.s. They don’t really matter, it turns out), to a college that invites scroungers in their cafeteria, reducing the waste, and food recovery organizations to redistribute left over food from one location to another (by the way those of you who are worried about diseases and law suites, there was a Federal Good Samaritan Act passed in 1996 that offers legal protection to anyone donating food.)

Much of how we view food and our wasteful routines is deemed acceptable by society. We see the re-use of food as unclean, or of lesser value, whether it is eating leftovers for dinner or a restaurant taking bread from one table for the next. But isn’t it slightly against common sense, Bloom questions. For a country that has a hungry people throughout it, it is disturbing to hear a statistic like; the average family wastes at least 25% of their food.

So why don’t more people care? Well, more people are starting to talk—it does seem a bit hard not to think about it when you throw out half a perfectly good uneaten sandwich and then watch food riots on the television. And now that we know about the problem—the classic follow up—how can we do anything to change it? Of course the half of a sandwich will not help the starving children in Africa, as they always say, but Bloom suggests building a more efficient system for distributing food from the start throughout the country and worldwide will benefit us all and decrease the food waste. We find ourselves back at the supply and demand economics, if we have less food waste, we have less demand to buy more unnecessary food, and with the a decrease in demand, the supply can then decrease in the States, and that food could potentially get redirected. Perhaps becoming a smarter eater and therefore shopper, there are countless things to act upon on a personal level and day-to-day basis, and, hey, actually save the leftovers and eat them the next meal!