Throughout history, technological advances have enabled significant growth in the human population. From the first agricultural revolution which introduced agriculture as we know it, replacing ancient hunter-gatherer societies, to the latest green revolution, where we rely heavily on mechanization and biotechnology to produce food at the fastest rate we have ever seen in human history. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Yet the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA, found that one-sixth of Americans still face food insecurity today. Maybe this could be due to a lack of GMOs? Maybe not enough pesticides? Herbicides? No. Two words: food waste. When you ask many people what problems we face in managing our resources, many will say deforestation, CO2 gas emissions, overfishing, etc. And this problem is still not addressed, given the magnitude of the situation. The USDA again found that in the United States, about 40 percent of perfectly safe foods are never eaten, which amounts to more than 365 million pounds of food every day. With increasing demand and waste due to population growth, it is imperative to reduce this problem to ensure America can survive for the future. So today we're going to first analyze the most common ways in which the average consumer wastes food, then we're going to look at how producers and large manufacturers waste food, before finally proposing legislation that can help reduce the severity of a problem. problem that is eating away at America itself. So how does the average consumer contribute to food waste in the first place? Well, a lot of it has to do with expiration dates. The main misunderstanding about the use-by date or sell-by date is that they are supposed to signal when the food becomes inedible, when in reality, this is simply not the case. The sell-by date tells stores how long they can keep it on their shelves and has nothing to do with freshness. Take milk for example. Dana Gunders of the Natural Resources Defense Council says milk is still safe after its expiration date, and even when it smells sour inside. “Milk sold in stores is typically pasteurized, a process that kills harmful pathogens and eliminates the risk of foodborne illness, even after the expiration or use-by date. Although the modern industry standard for dating milk quality is 21 to 24 days after pasteurization, states like Montana require milk to carry a date of 12 days after pasteurization and completely ban sale or donation of milk after that date, wasting countless gallons of good quality. milk. »The expiration date is exactly what stores put on their products to indicate when their product has reached its peak taste and quality. This gives stores the ability to manipulate how often their consumers throw away their product, regardless of the safety date. And this doesn't just apply to average consumers, as it can also undermine efforts to reduce food insecurity. Flashback to elementary school, my family decided to clean out our cupboard of unopened cans and donate them to the food drive.,.