Everyone is guilty of throwing away food even one time, even one bit.
In case you are thinking that those "spoiled", "expired" or "forgotten" food that you threw away is no big deal, well, you might be surprised to know that it's probably costing you hundreds of dollars.
A study on food waste was conducted and discovered that the amount of thrown away and wasted food is almost half of the food produced in the US.
"Forty percent of the food that we grow in this country ends up in landfills," said Victoria Ligon, a graduate student of the University of Arizona, author of the research.
Sure, one rotten apple or a spoiled soup may be little, but if one person wastes one food item per day in a year, it would generate a sea of wasted food, or even a continent, if you may.
Studying statistics from various organizations and previous researchers, even Ligon was surprised to find out that a huge chunk of this waste doesn't come from giant supermarkets and restaurants that regularly throw unsold food.
"Everybody, when they think about food waste, they think about grocery stores and sometimes restaurants and that's the first thing that pops into their head is, 'Oh the horrible grocery stores. They have these dumpsters full of food in the back.' But as I got interested and started reading more about this topic, it turns out that consumers are throwing away the bulk of that food," Ligon told 12 News.
Ligon believes that most consumers tend to throw away more food when they buy in bulk, where impulsively or not. "When a consumer buys in bulk they think they're saving money, but all of the excess thrown away may be costing them more."
Basing on the amount of food each person purchases annually and the estimation that they throw away 10 percent of the food they bought, it sums up that an individual throws away $400 a year, along with the food they didn't eat.
Some would laugh at $400 a year, but considering a family of four, a thousand bucks gets nowhere.
"People have really great intentions when they're shopping. They tend to buy lots of produce with the hope that they're going to eat salad, but then when it actually comes to dinner time they're tired, they've had a long day. They pull out the microwavable dinner."
Aside from the various efforts some countries are beginning to initiate, (France banned supermarkets from throwing away unsold food and Denmark opened the world's first surplus food shop), Ligon suggests that if we want to aid the clamoring issue of food waste, each person should commit, or, at least, make some changes in their way of life.
"The main takeaway from my research: it's much more efficient to shop from a food waste perspective than a money waste perspective," she said. "If you're shopping for dinner tonight, you're pretty likely to have an accurate picture of what your family might eat tonight," Ligon proposes.
Meanwhile, a mobile application called "Cook Brite" is downloadable for free that helps in keeping track of all the food stocked in the refrigerator and the pantry as well.
