Alex Motawi

If Americans are good at one thing, it’s eating. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Americans eat an average of 3750 calories per day, the second highest in the world (behind Austria). 

The United States is also the 13th-best country for food security and the 3rd-best country for food quality and safety according to the Global Food Security Index, meaning that Americans have better access to safe food than most.

However, the United States has an efficiency problem. Regarding food consumption outside of the home, the United States wastes the second-most food in the world (Malaysia is first), wasting over 140 pounds of food per person per year at places like restaurants and cafés. The United States is also 6th in retail food waste at 34.5 pounds per person as of 2019.

The implications of food waste go beyond the sinking feeling you get after throwing away some moldy veggies. Wasting food also means wasting all of the invested energy and water. In addition, if the food rots in the landfill, it emits methane–a greenhouse gas that is 84 times more toxic than carbon dioxide–constantly. In fact, US landfills emit 32.6 million cars worth of it.

Nothing takes up more space in our landfills than discarded food (22%), and part of this is because 80 percent of Americans end up misreading expiration labels and tossing perfectly healthy food. 

All said, putting wasted food on the consumer due to misinterpreted expiration labels is a bit unfair. Outside of baby food which is strictly regulated, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) have no standard way to label foods. Their website, beyond stating that the labels are strictly for food quality and not food safety, states that “There are no uniform or universally accepted descriptions used on food labels for open dating in the United States.”

Companies are given no direction and use methods from lab testing all the way to market turnover rates and complaint frequencies to date their food. While arbitrary, it’s hard to blame them. There is no government oversight and they are obligated to do all they can to turn a profit.

Recently, the government of California took this to heart. They haven’t regulated expiration labels, but in 2022, they passed a law forcing businesses to donate unused food to food recovery organizations. When the next part of the law was implemented in 2024, all businesses and residents were forced to compost food waste.

Earlier this year, Sacramento, California, tracked four months of residential trash pickup and found that the law has been very effective, increasing organic recycling by 14% and reducing landfill waste by 10%.

Outside of government intervention, it seems unlikely the food industry is going to find more suitable practices anytime soon, meaning the onus to make change falls to grocers and consumers. 

This is why eco-conscious people should shop at grocers with initiatives in place to donate products that cannot be sold but are still safe to eat. An example is Trader Joe’s, which Nikia Rohde, their public relations manager, says is “proud of our long-standing commitment to donate 100% of products that go unsold but remain fit to be enjoyed.”

As far as food waste reduction goes, local grocery stores are often ahead of the game. One example is the Davis Food Co-op, a food cooperative local to the college and farming town of Davis, California. They have a “robust tracking system” to minimize food waste and attack the problem from multiple viewpoints, as explained by Andrew Steward, the Davis Food Co-op database specialist.

“We know exactly how much food ends up being routed to all our different forms, and it’s actually an incredibly low amount amongst all food industry standards,” Steward said, “it’s something that we tend to pride ourselves on a little bit.” 

All of their food taken off the shelves gets meticulously detailed, and if safe for consumption, goes to places like their local food bank, free fridges around Davis (called “freedges”), and the Davis Night Market.

The Davis Night Market is essentially a farmer’s market composed entirely of free food available to locals. The Night Market is donation-based and supported by businesses like the Davis Food Co-op, who donate leftover food in an effort to increase equitable access to food and cut down on food waste.

Max Morgan is one of the main coordinators of the volunteer-driven Davis Night Market. Along with providing food, he sees the Night Market as an inclusive space and growing community and is enamored with “the idea of having music and a lot of other fun activities in a community space, especially late at night.”

With the market starting every weekday at 9 pm, they have a consistent plan to pick up donations from the Co-op and local bakeries every afternoon before the event. It’s a win-win for businesses as they can build goodwill without taking on the costs of transporting leftover food to food banks.

Morgan, an avid birder, lovingly calls the organization “vultures of the food system.” They scavenge food from all sources and cater to all sorts of people, giving food to the unhoused, families, and students. As for the volunteers, it takes a special kind of person to volunteer from 9 to 11 pm on weekday evenings.

The biggest problem facing the Davis Night Market is the same problem faced by their community: a lack of food security. Due to being donation-reliant, they don’t know how much food they have to give out each night. 

Morgan loses sleep over the issue, as they need to “prevent the horde” of people aggressively “bum-rushing the tables” on nights when their food supply is low, but also serve the community as much as possible. Most people find out about the event by word of mouth because the organization can’t afford the influx of people that comes with digital marketing.

The Davis Night Market does their best to minimize food waste and feed the community, but they can’t do it all.

Donations to organizations fighting food insecurity are only one of the methods the Davis Food Co-op uses to combat food waste. 

One new idea Steward implemented was taking older veggies or pieces like food stems and giving them away freely as “chicken greens.” Offered first-come, first-served right from the register, “chicken greens” are a way to ensure everything gets eaten. They aren’t getting eaten by humans, but the food isn’t being wasted either.

Steward heavily emphasized the productivity the Co-op has gotten out of their food tracking system, which he implemented. It allows them to have exact data on where their food goes and identify trends.

A benefit is that they can prevent food waste from the other side of their operation, using data on sales to adjust marketing strategies and order quantities to prevent surplus.

He says the data has “helped them on both fronts” by allowing them to function better as a business while also upholding one of their four main pillars, a commitment to minimizing food waste.

The Davis Food Co-op can donate most of its unsold products and compost the rest. However, Steward lamented that one product they have to “dispose of” (he prefers to say that instead of thrown out) is milk. Food safety requirements make milk ineligible for composting, so they have to pour it down the drain.

If the United States had more people like Andrew Steward, maybe food waste wouldn’t be such a problem.