On Aug. 24, The Los Angeles Times published an article about the amount of food that goes to waste in America. According to a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, Americans throw out nearly every other bite of their food, wasting up to 40 percent of the natural food supply each year, equaling up to about $165 billion in uneaten provisions.
Can we all just step back and think about that statement for a moment? We throw out almost every other bite of our food. We’re already stereotyped for consuming large amounts of food as Americans, but to add wasting nearly half of it is humiliating.
The article in The Los Angeles Times was sobering to say the least. Also according to the NRDC, food waste is the largest single portion of solid waste in American landfills. An average family of four wastes about 20 pounds of food per month.
The reasons behind our food consumption and waste vary. I think our food distribution is a major problem with our wasting of food. It’s easy to order a meal at a restaurant and not finish all of it because of proportion sizes. And even if you do take the leftovers home, how often to you forget about them and throw them away? As The Los Angeles Times article pointed out, we’re used to seeing a pyramid of produce in grocery stores. Think about how much of that is thrown out from going bad. Perhaps something as simple as changing our display of food in grocery stores could cut back on our wasting of natural resources.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t guilty of wasting food. My intentions are good, but the selfish, spoiled American in me sometimes doesn’t always want to eat her leftovers or the Spaghettios in the back of her pantry and ends up throwing them away.
 I think what hurts most about these facts and statistics is there are people in our country, in our state and in our city who go to bed hungry. We are surrounded by families who don’t know where their next meal will come from. It’s bad enough to know there are people all over the world who literally die because they don’t have food to eat, but to know there are people around us who are hungry is absolutely heart wrenching.
According to feedingamerica.org, in 2010, 48.8 million Americans live in food-insecure households. Mississippi has the highest percent of household food insecurity at 19.4 percent, exceeding the national food insecurity rate at 14.6 percent. Our state is hungry, while at the same time has a reputation for being overweight. What a sad paradox.
Over the summer, I spent a lot of time thinking about what breaks my heart. A dear friend of mine shared a quote from Frederick Buechner with me.”The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s hunger meet.”
      This article isn’t about believing in God or if he calls you to something; I want each of you to think about the “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s hunger meet.” For me, I’ve realized my heart breaks for the broken hearted. Seeing a homeless person beg for dinner in my own hometown kills me. May my deep gladness be meeting the world’s hunger.
I want to encourage you to get out of your comfort zone and be aware of what you waste. Make an effort to be thankful for what you have and conscious of how you use it.