If Slaughter Houses had Glass Walls Everyone Would Be Vegetarian. A day in a slaughter house. Reducing Food Waste and Losses in the U.S. Food Supply. Food is simply too good to waste. Even the most sustainably farmed food does us no good if the food is never eaten. Getting food to our tables eats up 10 percent of the total U.S. energy budget, uses 50 percent of U.S. land, and swallows 80 percent of freshwater consumed in the United States. Yet, 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. That is more than 20 pounds of food per person every month. Nutrition is also lost in the mix -- food saved by reducing losses by just 15 percent could feed more than 25 million Americans every year at a time when one in six Americans lack a secure supply of food to their tables.
Identifying Efficiency Losses in the U.S. This paper examines the inefficiencies in the U.S. food system from the farm to the fork to the landfill. The average American consumer wastes 10 times as much food as someone in Southeast Asia, up 50 percent from Americans in the 1970s. Much can be learned from work that is already under way in Europe.