Americans may be the world's biggest wasters of food, but if so, they're not about to own up to it. A recent national survey done for the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future found the vast majority profess to tossing out relatively little.
In an online questionnaire filled out by 1,010 people, nearly three-quarters said they discarded less food than the average American. More than half said they threw away just 10 percent of the edibles they bought, while 13 percent claimed they didn't get rid of any food. Only 3 percent of those participating figured they discarded more than average.
"There's people that may not want to admit that this is going on — or may not want to admit it to the survey," said Roni Neff, lead author of the paper, published June 10 in the journal PLOS ONE.
Neff is director of the Hopkins center's food system sustainability program and an assistant professor in the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The reality is far different from such rosy self-perceptions, however. Food waste is a worldwide problem, studies have found — more so in industrialized countries and particularly in the United States. About 40 percent of food produced in this country goes uneaten, reports the Natural Resources Defense Council. That's more than 20 pounds of food discarded monthly for every American. Globally, a third of all food produced gets wasted, according to a study done for the United Nations.
Such waste has enormous social and environmental implications, as the calories thrown out would help meet the daily needs of those who can't get or afford enough to eat now. The uneaten food also represents a waste of fresh water — up to a third of what's used to irrigate crops — as well as land, fertilizer and energy. The discards often wind up in landfills and contribute to air and water pollution.
It's not clear from the survey why so many people underestimate their food waste, though the survey did show that most were generally aware that food waste is a problem, at least globally.
"What we can take away from it — regardless of what is actually going on — is, this tells us how people see themselves," Neff said. "People basically think of themselves as aware and motivated and fairly knowledgeable."
Those who owned up to tossing out food often said they did so because they were afraid of getting sick from eating it, or said they wanted to eat only the freshest of food. Asked in one question how brown they'd let a banana get and still eat it, the mean response was 40 percent.
"The thing we tend to throw out the most of is fruits and vegetables," Neff said. "Those are the most perishable. We may be buying those and then they're perishing in our fridge."
More than a third of those surveyed said they put a lot of effort into reducing food waste, while nearly three-quarters said they made at least a "medium" effort. Even so, the survey found varying adherence to shopping habits that would tend to reduce waste, such as planning meals before going to the store, and sticking to a shopping list.
At the same time, the survey found willingness by many to do more, with more than 40 percent saying they thought it would be easy or very easy for them to reduce their current level of waste. Only 16 percent thought it would be tough.
While more study is needed to understand why people underestimate their waste, Neff said, the survey does provide some clues to how Americans might be influenced to discard less food. Respondents listed saving money as a leading reason for not wasting food, along with setting a good example for children. Relatively few, just 10 percent, cited environmental concerns as a major motive.
Food waste could be reduced by some changes in how businesses package and sell it, Neff said. In the survey, roughly half of the respondents said they'd like to see more resealable packages, more variety in product sizes, "buy one, get one later" sales and discounts for foods that are overripe or nearing their sell-by dates.
While there hasn't been a concerted effort in this country to cut down on food waste, Neff said there have been a couple of pushes in Europe. France recently banned its supermarkets from throwing out food, requiring them to donate it. Neff said the policy is too new to know how it will work.
But a broader, multi-pronged campaign in the United Kingdom targeting both consumers and businesses with anti-waste messages and incentives yielded a 21 percent drop over five years in avoidable discards of edibles. Neff called that "almost unheard of."
"If we made a similar kind of effort and investment," she said, "there's no reason we couldn't have that kind of success also."
There are nonprofits, religious organizations and other groups that now work to feed the hungry with surplus food from supermarkets, restaurants and other places.
One such local effort is Gather Baltimore, which collects unsold food from the Sunday farmers' market under the Jones Falls Expressway as well as from several large food distribution businesses in the area.
Arthur Morgan, the founder and driving force of Gather Baltimore, said he and volunteer helpers make the rounds daily to collect the food, sort it and bag it. They deliver it to neighborhood associations, recreation centers and other places where the needy can get it — including some of the corner stores in neighborhoods that are considered "food deserts" because of the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables for sale there.
With individual donations and modest foundation support, Morgan said Gather Baltimore is able to supply food to between 300 and 500 families a week.
"But we're not even touching the amount of people that we can or should," he said.
The challenge for consumers, Neff said, is there's no handy outlet for donating unconsumed perishables that are within days of spoiling. The only real remedy for families is to buy more carefully — and make a more concerted effort to consume their food before it can go bad.