John Oliver just broke down America’s biggest food problem
Leave it to John Oliver, the crown prince of you-should-care-more-about-this-thing, to bring us right back to reality when it comes to the American food system. On this week’s episode of his hit news comedy show, Last Week Tonight, the Brit took Americans to task for just how much food we waste every day.
“Between producers, sellers, and consumers, Americans are throwing out a third or more of our food,” says Oliver. “And the amount we throw out has increased by about 50 percent since the 1970s.”
“At this rate,” he quips. “In forty years when you order pizza from Domino’s, they’ll just deliver it straight to the nearest dumpster—as they should—but that’s not the point here.”
Oliver goes onto discuss not only the economic and social impact of dumping our food (read: some 50 million Americans are food-insecure, and yet have no access to the perfectly good food we’re dumping), but also the environmental impact, which includes the landfill production of methane, a gas 20 times more capable of trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
In the end, Oliver concludes that we need a more comprehensive solution to our food wasting problem, whether that be “resolving to eat uglier fruit,” “taking expiration dates with a pinch of salt,” or, in reference to fears among grocers that people who get sick from discarded food will take legal action, “no longer worrying about getting sued by high-powered lawyers representing the hungry.”
Check out the whole eye-opening clip below.
Related:
