Comment by code_duck | Hacker News Reader

Comment by code_duck | Hacker News Reader

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One area the U.S. could definitely focus on is reducing food waste. Restaurants throw away a lot of food that was perfectly good 4 days prior. The habits of people here regarding food waste is significant, too - I have a friend who will go to Taco John late at night, get six tacos, three potato things, 10 packets of sauce, eat two tacos and a potato thing and leave the rest to waste in his kitchen counter. He sees it as $5, but the costs to society may be more than that. Or my girlfriend's kids, who will fidget and fight about eating a burrito until we throw away half of it. Based on my vague observations, at least half the food produced gets tossed out for some reason (and not even composted!).

For instance, significant resources went into creating meat like this 30-40 lbs I saw wasted in a dumpster outside a restaurant in Denver : http://i.imgur.com/ns4TunE.jpg Beef is one of the most water intensive food products, too.

Most of what you complain about can be reduced by appropriately costing-out the externalities of meat production.

Of course, the problem always comes when big corporate AG can essentially shut down public debate by buying all the seats of any discussion (i.e., corruption).

Indeed, restaurants and individuals waste food because they can afford to. It's a shame if the only way to stop that is for food to become dramatically more expensive. Ending government subsidies on agriculture and food would be a good step to consumers realizing the actual cost of food.

Food waste has been remarkably resilient to reduction.

Where we used to see waste on the farm or in the marketing chain, it's now at the home or restaurant. Which means after a great deal of energy and effort have been put into harvesting, processing, transporting, and storing it.

Late night runs to a place called Taco John? Sounds like a post-alcohol food run. Maybe start there with the food waste issue :).

If it was me, I'd out the tacos in the fridge and eat them the next day. I think he believes next-day tacos are worthless due to flavor and texture changes, or some vague philosophy of only eating the freshest fast food.

My girlfriend's son operates similarly; he often makes a box of macaroni and cheese for dinner, and only eats half of it. He refuses to eat left over macaroni, so regularly at least half the box is wasted. My suggestion would be to splits box in half prior to preparation, but so far that has yet to be impmemented.

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