American families are tossing a ton of fine food — and it’s costing them.
According to new research published Thursday in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the average American household wastes nearly one-third of its food. The squandering comes at a cost: $1,866 a year per household, on average, for a total of $240 billion annually in the US.
“Our findings are consistent with previous studies, which have shown that 30 to 40 percent of the total food supply in the United States goes uneaten,” says study author and Penn State agricultural economics professor Edward Jaenicke in a press release. Trashed household food doesn’t only mean families are being inefficient and frittering away money, but also that they’re wasting resources including land, energy, water and labor used to make the unconsumed food, says Jaenicke.
For the study, researchers analyzed data from 4,000 households that took part in the US Department of Agriculture’s National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey. They were able to obtain personal data like metabolic rates from participants to determine how much food homes got versus how much food they needed.
More than two-thirds of households, the study authors found, wasted between 20 percent of half of all the food they bought and “even the least wasteful household wastes 8.7 percent of the food it acquires,” says Jaenicke.
Higher-income households generated more waste, as did healthier households eating more perishable fruits and vegetables.
“It’s possible that programs encouraging healthy diets may unintentionally lead to more waste,” says Jaenicke.
Meanwhile, poorer households — especially those participating in federal assistance programs — and bigger households were found to waste less.
Researchers also discovered newfound significance for the shopping list: Those homes which had a plan for what to buy when visiting the supermarket tended to waste less, they found. Homes located farther from grocery stores were also more efficient.
“This suggests that planning and food management are factors that influence the amount of wasted food,” says Jaenicke.
