John Oliver Is Horrified By How Much Food You Waste
“It can fill a surprising number of stadiums even though most people consider it complete garbage”.
If you missed the latest episode of Last Week Tonight, you missed John Oliver delving into the mountains of wasted food we discard every day. “It’s lovely to have you with us.'”.
In Sunday night’s airing of Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver has some tough words for billionaire real estate magnate and Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.
Unfortunately, while we may be nowhere near close to solving our wasteful food crisis, if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s #keepittighttatum.
Every year. America throws away enough food to fill 730 football stadiums, Oliver notes, and this is a disturbing statistic for at least a couple reasons.
“At a time when the landscape of California is shriveling up like a pumpkin in front of a house with a lazy dad, it seems especially unwise that farmers are pumping water into food that ends up being used as a garnish for landfills-because those landfills go on to cause problems of their own”. First of all, while the average USA household wastes 15 to 25 percent of the food it buys, millions of American citizens (49.1 million in one 2013 study) struggle to keep food on the table.
Oliver ended with a call to arms: “We all have to address our relationship with food waste”. It’s also a huge waste of labor and natural resources to grow food that’s never eaten, and all of those fruits and vegetables being thrown into landfills decompose without any air, which creates methane, a greenhouse gas that traps heat.
“Small businesses should get tax incentives to donate food, so we have to find a way to pass that”, said Oliver.