Stop buying food just to throw it away.

In response to: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/05/13/un-one-third-of-food-produced-for-human-consumption-is-uneaten/

I saw this linked on a friend's facebook page so of course, I had to write about it.

People of this world need to recognize there is never a problem with supply, in terms of ending world hunger. I don't buy into bullshit such as "there is not enough food on this planet". I sincerely believe we have enough food on earth to feed every single person. The US tends to subsidize grain production so much that farmers literally have rotting stocks of grain and other produce sitting around because it never gets consumed. Americans, in general, consume too much food. Not literally eating it though, but buying things on sale, ordering at a restaurant, and then not eating it. You know what gets to me every time? When I see people order like 10 dishes at a local Chinese restaurant I go to, eat maybe a piece of this, a bit of that, and then the rest get thrown away. Literally, if they order 10 dumplings, they eat 2 or 3 and the rest is thrown away.

This also occurs with buffets. Piles and piles of half-eaten food, just because people want to get the best deal, and they have an excuse to not finish everything. I know they paid for it, etc etc, but seriously. It's not money. It's goddamn resources you burned up right there. More examples? I once walked by my neighborhood Duane Reade, which is a pharmacy/drugstore chain in NY that for some reason started to sell sandwiches and other "freshly-packed" pre-made lunches. And on that day, I saw outside, bags and bags of loaves of bread, and boxes of sandwiches. Just thrown out. And a few blocks away, we have homeless and impoverished people who don't have anything to eat. I'm not even talking about inefficient allocation around the world, but in the same friggin city. Did you know 1 of 6 (I believe) Americans go hungry each day? And 1 out of 4 school children don't get enough to eat at home?

Instead of promoting more and more production, can we get more research to fund better methods of allocating food instead? How can we efficiently get more food out to more people? These are the questions we should be asking ourselves..