Nine biscuits

A few nights ago, I was chopping celery that was on its way out, trimming the brown parts and the ends that were dry or more funny looking than I ideally like to consume. We all do this, but I am notorious for having "bones" (as my family has named them), for foods that definitely do not have actual bones.

Anyway, I put said bones, or the rejected parts, in our compost plastic container with other bones of food (most of it is peels and egg shells)... and then I thought about how that amount of food looks for just the two of us, which expanded to wondering about our neighborhood, city, state, country and yes, the world.

How much food do we all throw away either because it looks a little funny or is actually rotten or inedible?

Turns out a lot of people have already thought about this - not surprising, really.

Tristam Stuart breaks the whole world's food supply down, meaning everything - plant and animal - that's grown on farms / in fields, to be represented by nine biscuits.

• One is lost before leaving the farm due to lack of infrastructure, like food crates or refrigeration.
• Three are fed to livestock, and of those three two are lost to the livestock feces and heat they create.
• Two are thrown into bins directly (aforementioned "bones" that I threw away from the celery).
• This means four are left to feed on. 

Four... out of nine!?! 

After thinking about this insane inefficiency and watching the TED talk, I cannot stop thinking about how no sandwich shops use ends of bread loaves, or how there are one BILLION hungry people in the world, or how we are putting an incredible amount of environmental stress on our land only for people to throw out good food and others to go hungry. It is mind boggling, and frustrating, but the best part is knowing that we already have enough to feed everyone - we just need to figure out how to use it better.

Looks like I will be trimming that celery a little closer, whether it be celery or any other food, in an effort to have much fewer "bones" going forward.