Poverty & Food Wastage in America

Essay by spoonful September 2006

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I found a very interesting article on the Internet which actually helped me to have a great overview of poverty in the United States of America. I believed that America is the most powerful and richest country in the world. Therefore, I guessed that there are not many people who are experiencing poverty as much as in other countries. However, this seems to be prejudgment without knowing that poverty is a reality in America.

According to the article, 35.9 million people live below the poverty line in America. That includes 12.9 million children. It is an amazing number of people. Also, 3.5 percent of U.S. households experience hunger. Therefore, some people in these households skip meals or eat too little, sometimes they cannot eat anything for a whole day. There are 9.6 million people who live in these homes, including three million children. A total of 33 million Americans continue to live in households that do not have an adequate supply of food.

One surprising fact to know, besides the poverty problems, is the amount of food that people waste every day in America. It is stated that every year more than 350 billion pounds of edible food is available for human consumption in the United States. However, nearly 100 billion pounds of the food is wasted by retailers, restaurants, and consumers which includes fresh vegetables, fruits, milk, and grain products. With that 100 billion pounds of food, 700 million hungry human beings could have been fed.

My first reaction after reading this article was that I was shocked by the fact that numerous people, which is about 35.9 million, are experiencing hunger in the country where most people in the world would think that there are fewer problems with poverty. I believe that some do not understand how...