Yup, this has been known for a very long time. In fact there is easily enough food to support the entire world.
Not in my house! I think it's very safe to estimate that the fiancee and I eat (or save and eat later) about 95% of what we buy and cook.
Too poor not to. Also, wasteful.
Companies don't do this because they can (and have been) sued. Even if they give the food to people who would otherwise starve, and even if 99.99% of that food was fine, the 0.01% of food that isn't would leave them open to lawsuit.
Be honest with yourself. If you saw a headline that read, "Multinational Company Feeds Homeless Man Bad Food" wouldn't you be just as outraged at the "big bad greedy company" that only feeds people "bad" food?
Forget the tens of thousands of people that they've saved from starvation. They made someone sick, and they would be absolutely fucking destroyed for it. That's why they don't do it.
Actually, most will last longer, canned food depending on the integrity of the seal and what is inside, can last virtually indefinitely, the expiration date has more to do with legal protection than it has to do with how long things actually last.
Meat will in many cases last less, depending on how your fridge is set, milk will last longer as long its closed, if it is open it doesnt matter what the expiry date says, it has a lifetime after being exposed to air.
The "rule" for public food places is a week after being open, or a week after the expiration date, notice, this is already on a public food place which is liable to being sued, and as such their limits are inferior to the real lifetime left on said product.
Also not to mention that unless you have some problem, a few bacteria wont do you any harm when ingested, that is what your immune system and stomach acid is for, in many cases of people getting sick is because their immune system is already compromised
If it looks edible and its not out of date - eat it.
If it looks edible and is out of date - eat it
If it doesn't look edible and is out of date - Try to eat it.
If it runs away - Try to eat it.
Its always try before study, if your stomach can handle it ;D
Not really. Yes, we produce more food than would be required for to feed the world. But:
1. We don't know exactly where the hunger will be and what products these people will prefer, thus we must produce more food than will be consumed to be sure we don't run out.
2. Getting the food to everyone isn't easy and demands a lot of resources. Just because there's some surplus in an US walmart doesn't mean there's any point shipping it to Camerun for example.
working in a grocery store, not all that much gets thrown away by us because the food that is 'best before' gets marked down when it's out of date and the food that is "use by" gets marked down when it's close to being out of date and the mark downs are good enough that most or usually all of the mark downs sell. Like 3l milk that is usually $3 will be 50c but it goes off the following day, and I guess the people who buy it use it all the day they buy it or something.
We do sometimes get use by food past it's date of course and then we have to throw it away but not as often as you'd think.
O.T
Personally I rarely ever throw away food. That's mostly because I don't have a car so I only ever buy food 1 day in advance of when I eat it since I have to carry everything home. Only exception is tins which have massive use by dates anyway. Only time I throw away food is if I buy something to try it only to find out it's completely disgusting, and my dog doesn't want it either.
They would have more money if they didn't have to pay for food. Some members of the government tried to tackle this issue here, although the bill didn't pass. Interestingly quoted in that article is the figure that only 6% of food waste in the UK is from retail, while 50% or more is from households - to answer a few questions posed earlier.