Food Waste: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

our main story tonight concerns food or as plants and animals might call it the afterlife we we love food in America as you would know if you've ever turned on a television set I have eye candy pancakes are back introducing all you could eat wings Golden Corral everyone's favorite endless shrimp is back people wait for this promotion all year long sadness sadness sadness let food replace your sadness starry blitz did not hole in your heart that's a catchy way to sell hog scraps making barbecue sauce in fact celebrating America often goes hand in hand with celebrating its food what's this actual commercial running right now what's more American than a cheeseburger this cheeseburger loaded with a hotdog and potato chips in the hands of all American models Samantha hoops in a hot tub in a pickup truck driven by an American bull rider on an aircraft carrier under the gaze of Lady Liberty as she admires the most American thickburger new at Carl's jr. and Hardee's Wow a cheeseburger with hotdogs and potato chips ladies and gentlemen I give you the new Confederate flag she's majestic no story about the food we eat it's a story about the food we don't eat because there is a surprising amount of it a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council says that as much as 40% of all the food produced in the United States never gets eaten Americans throw away 165 billion dollars worth of food every year that's about 20 pounds per person every month Americans throw away enough food every year to fill 730 football stadiums food waste is like the band Rascal Flatts it can fill a surprising number of stadiums even though many people consider it complete garbage Detroit produces sellers and consumers Americans are throwing out a third or more of our food and the amount we throw out has increased by around 50% since the 1970s at this rate in 40 years when you order pizza from dominos they'll just deliver it straight to the nearest dumpster as they should but that's not the point here if you think that this sounds bad just wait until you see how it looks check out this waste dump in California Salinas Valley we got a whole load pretty much a loose organic lettuce you know we've we've got spinach towards the back looks like it's perfectly fine nothing wrong with it we got some some kale here we got broccoli in the back as well we have plenty of produce to make a salad here oh not just a salad you could make a significantly better salad than the salads they actually sell at McDonald's which look like the trimmings in Ronald McDonald's lawnmower mixed with grimace ejaculate and the thing is watching all that food go from farm to not a table is awful for a bunch of reasons first and most obviously there are many people in this country who needs that food in 2013 nearly 50 million Americans lived in food-insecure households meaning that at some point in the year they struggled to put enough food on the table and the fact that we throw away a third of our food gets pretty alarming when you hear from some of those people that's hard I'll go without food before my kids will budget down to the penny in it it's not enough yeah it brings you the tears yeah it's just hard they're so young and it's hard it is crazy that that is happening in a country with 730 football stadiums full of uneaten food it's insane but there are also other less obvious consequences to discarding food for a start we're wasting all the labor and natural resources that went into making it and 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 the 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 if you were to throw an apple corer or just out into the woods it's not a big deal problem comes when all of that waste is aggregated and it decomposes without air in a landfill that anaerobic condition is what creates methane which is a greenhouse gas that's more than 20 times as potent as co2 at trapping heat that's right when we dump food into a landfill we're essentially throwing a trash blanket over a flatulent food man and Dutch oven in the entire planet and if you're thinking but but hold on John what if I'm an who couldn't give a about America's hungry families or the long-term viability of life on Earth well first let me say mr. Trump thank you so much for taking the time secondly there is a selfish financial reason for you to care about this story - in our households were wasting somewhere between 15 and 25 percent of the food that we're buying you know that's expensive I mean imagine walking out of a grocery store with four bags of groceries dropping one in the parking lot and just not bothering to pick it up and that's essentially what we're doing in our homes today and that's not good when you're throwing away that much food you're not just being wasteful you're wining and dining raccoons oh this is absolutely lovely thanks for this we needed a break from the kids it's a good thing so many of us have access to plenty of relatively inexpensive food I love the fact that we live in a country with Cap'n Crunch peanut butter crunch chocolatey crunch sprinkled donut crunch cinnamon roll crunch Christmas crunch and Halloween crunch I will even defend oops or berries crunch a cereal so unnecessary that its actual name includes an apology for its existence but it does seem it does seem like our food wastage is getting to a critical mass and so much of it stems from our own habits and misconceptions for instance stores big and small often routinely overstock so that you can walk in and see tons of food there because if they don't do that as this small farm stand operator describes it we might not buy anything and there was an hour left in the market that one bunch of charge would sit there and no one would buy it but if I had 30 bunches of charge of--like bursting out I probably sell like 25 verses in charge so what is that saving people are totally imposters and they think if there's one that there's something wrong it's true I wouldn't buy that child partly because it's charge but mainly because we naturally assume the last option is a bad option which in many contexts is absolutely the case for example you don't want the last magazine in the doctor's office because it's always Golf Digest always and no one has ever read Golf Digest that's not even a golf club in his hand but no one noticed because it's on Golf Digest but when it comes to produce the last option is probably completely fine especially because as another farmer explains even slightly subpar fruits and vegetables don't make it to the produce aisle every time that the people are picking they'll have a few they throw on the ground because there's always a few that aren't quite perfect this is a perfectly good peach right on the ground like this oh my god if you just look down this way it's like a bounty look at that and the reason that happens is that if a peach doesn't meet strict aesthetic standards it might not be worth a farmer even trying to sell it our produce oils have become a lot like Leonardo DiCaprio's penis exclusively accessible to the physically flawless body-shaming is actually so ingrained it's reflected in the USDA's grading standards just look at the visual grading standards for peaches this is a number one peach and of course it is that's an undeniably beautiful peach oh I want to buy that peach dinner and it whereas whereas embrace yourself this is a number-2 peach and that is an abomination unto the Lord and as soon as it is labeled a number two it can lose two-thirds of its market value to a farmer even though its contents are the same and many retailers have standards even more strict than the USDA s all of which is why so many peaches end up being thrown on the ground to rot and that should not be how we treat our fruit it should only be how we treat our celebrities so help me God Channing Tatum you lose one muscle fiber on that six-pack and I will personally toss you into Hollywood's landfill you keep it tight Tatum hashtag keep it tight tater we don't just reject food because of how it looks sometimes we do it out of pure fear according to one estimate 91% of us have thrown out food that's past its sell-by dates because we're afraid it's not safe and I am absolutely part of that 91% we're weirdly reverent towards these dates even when they make no sense use buy sell buy and nothing but just that date and this is all the same brand this is all the same brand this is not only the same brand but also the same 2% show us this shows there's a complete confusion out there the only labels on food more meaningless than those are the ones on Smirnoff bottles that say triple distilled vodka really Smirnoff so you ran the potato sweats through the tube sock two extra times thanks for spending the effort we naturally assume sell by dates reflect a uniform standard of safety but that is not true well actually there's nothing to do a safety at all it's just a manufacturers best guess of wine that food is gonna be the freshest and at the best quality exactly those dates are decided on by manufacturers and if I were a food manufacturer I would make those dates as tight as possible to convince people to buy a new one of my products because unlike apple I can't just create a new operating system that suddenly means your old cereal is incompatible with your mouth the truth is with the exception of baby formula the federal government does not require any food to carry an expiration date and state laws vary widely with nine states not requiring any date labels at all which means most of the time sell by dates are one of those things that look official but you can probably ignore like a child in a cop uniform just to stop it Tyler are not under a West you are under a West but because we think those dates are real many supermarkets throw expired food out even before its sell-by date and they don't donate it for what they think is a pretty good reason everything that's closed dated or any calls no we can't you can't it's a safety you can't if you guys donate it then or you don't donate it so if it was straight in the garbage they go straight in the garbage history losses have you guys been sued before that's a common misconception we all think that if you donate food and someone gets sick if you get sued I thought that until earlier this week but we looked into it and couldn't find a single case where a food donor has been sued it doesn't happen it's a false fear like believing if you go in the water after eating you'll get a cramp and drown yeah it turns out that isn't true either this week has blown my mind because the system is if you donate food to a charity you're covered by the Emerson Act which says you cannot be sued if you make a food donation in good faith you presumably get the same cover with donating clothes even though in some cases there you really should be sued donating a cowl-neck sweater hello the homeless live in shelters not for 2008 Oh yes here's the problem even if more people understood that there would still be food that doesn't get to people who need it for a critical reason Harold McClure D of HMC farms says he'd like to donate more of his peaches to the food banks but getting it into the hands of somebody to eat it isn't isn't free there's got to be an economic incentive to move more of this into an avenue that food banks couldn't take advantage of it's a lot easier and cheaper just to base it throw it away and that may be the biggest issue of all for businesses donating food is genuinely expensive you've got to box it store it coordinate deliveries for it there's a lot of overheads and you cannot fault companies for caring about their bottom line in the same way you can't fault a dog for caring about licking its balls it's what dogs do it's natural and dog balls are delicious companies in their defense are not charities which is why they should be incentivized to donate food with tax breaks large corporations already get one but annoyingly that same break for small businesses is not a permanent part of the tax code meaning that Congress has to keep renewing it and that's a problem because family farms or local restaurants may not know if they're going to get that break at the end of the year and therefore whether donating food will be financially viable for them it's a ridiculous system which problem prevents a lot of food from being donated so here is the good news in February this year a congressman proposed HR 640 for the fighting hunger incentive Act to make that tax break permanent here actually is one of the bill's sponsors it's time to get rid of these short-term fixes embrace long-term solutions this legislation simply makes the provisions permanent and when you think about it that's important because when something's not permanent it affects our behavior that's what we all treat rental cars like we're in a fast and furious movie I'm sorry sharp turn ahead get ready to drift Kia Sorento now now you'll be happy to hear that bill passed the house however by the time it did it had been bundled together with other unpaid for tax breaks and retitled the America gives more act but still that original provision was in there which means this problem has been solved the show is over we can roll credits and all live happily ever after right no not right because when the bill got to the Senate they and I honestly did not know this was even possible they removed everything from inside the bill retitled it the trade facilitation and trade Enforcement Act of 2015 and refilled it with completely different language concerning border control and us-israeli relations which meant yes HR 644 passed just with a completely different title and completely different contents it's like going to a restaurant ordering a veggie burger and having the way to say here you go we made out of meatloaf and we call it a waffle and then you can't even say well I don't want this give it to someone who needs it because they can't because they don't know whether or not they'll get a tax credit for it the same thing everyone basically agrees small businesses should get tax incentives to donate food so we have to find a way to pass that but even if we do it will be one small part of what needs to be a much bigger solution from and resolving to eat uglier fruit to taking expiration dates with a pinch of salt to no longer worrying about getting sued by high-powered lawyers representing the hungry we all have to address our relationship with food waste or at the very least our cheeseburger commercials are gonna have to get a lot more honest what's more American than a cheeseburger this cheeseburger loaded with a hot dog and potato chips in the hands of a model in a hot tub in a pickup truck on an aircraft carrier in front of the Statue of Liberty I'll tell you what's more American if that cheese burgers that thrown away along with 15 other cheeseburgers in front of a food insecure family for who frankly cannot believe their eyes as they stand on top of 14 tons of perfectly edible if aesthetically unappealing fruits and vegetables which in turn sits on top of 80 tons of dairy products all one day patched their arbitrary sell-by dates all of which sits inside a tear rolling down Abraham Lincoln's face on Mount Rushmore which is now nearly chin deep and millions of discarded cheeseburgers all gradually decomposing and emitting flammable methane red white and blue that is king of America I think that this can cost you in your hardest you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 14,732,897

Rating: 4.904274 out of 5

Keywords: HBO (TV Network), Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (TV Program), Food, food waste, John Oliver (TV Writer)

Id: i8xwLWb0lLY

Length: 17min 49sec (1069 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 19 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/GigaFluxx]

I know food waste is a big issue but I find it really upsetting that a bill can be completely altered like that after going trough an initial approval, basically manipulating people's good intentions and thus support, into a vehicle to sneak your ulterior motives in on. Whether or not the altered bill in question had anything negative isn't my point either, it's the fact that this behavior is allowed which opens the door for possible negative outcomes.

How many bills have been passed under the guise of something else? I know we've seen it before (I believe net neutrality was involved in a similar tactic, but I may be mistaken) but it's just disgusting that we can't actually make large strides for a positive change because it will just get ripped to shreds and deceivingly replaced, by those in power looking to self promote and profit.

[u/Tylor_with_an_o]

As a cook, I was a bit dissapointed by the lack of restaurants being mentioned. So much food is wasted in those places.

[u/ElNido]

Good shit. I have to say that he's right about picking out the most aesthetically pleasing veggies and fruit... I've been guilty of this most of my adult life.

If anyone wants to watch a good documentary related to this, check out "Dive!" It explores people trying to dumpster dive perfectly good food from businesses (sometimes for donation too) and dealing with all sorts of problems.

[u/Darabo]

I'm quite glad John Oliver got to cover this topic. A bit of a backstory, I work in the tech industry in San Francisco. About a year ago I attended a hackathon with a couple of hundred participants and the organizers bought a bunch of pizza for us, by the end of the night about thirty boxes of pizza were left untouched (I'm dead serious).

When I asked the organizers what will happen to the untouched pizza they said they'd just throw it away. Seeing all the untouched pizza and hearing their response made me a little dumbfounded, so I gathered a few participants and we brought all the boxes to a group of homeless people, which sadly ironic were around the corner from our building. Within two minutes we handed out all the boxes of pizza and whatnot.

After the hackathon I wanted to launch a nonprofit startup that did similar to what John Oliver proposed in the show, gather unused and "less appealing" food from stores, farmers and even businesses (you'd be surprised how much waste is from restaurants and catering) and either donate or sell it to break even our costs to charities, shelters and etc, with us doing the packaging, verifying the tax breaks and such.

The problem was that almost everyone I met had the misconception of the threat of lawsuits, as well as the lack of profit (which is not the point of a nonprofit at all). So while I got a lot of sympathy from companies, farmers, investors and etc no one wanted to participate. After no traction for two months I stopped working on it to work on another project.

Hopefully with John Oliver covering the topic more people will be aware of this and something will actually come from it. Hell I'd love to rejuvenate what I was doing before or help someone else with the same goals!

[u/Cybugger]

The most interesting thing here, for me, is that you can't be sued for food given charitability. Shoots down the widely held, and false, belief that it is a stumbling block.

[u/ShadowRaikou]

Nice Trump burn, John Oliver, nice.

[u/stormelemental13]

Just an FYI on expiration dates from a Food Scientist. Manufacturers want longer expiration dates, not shorter ones. Companies, at least none I am aware of, don't put shorter sell-by dates to increase sales.

*Edit. Someone in another sub asked why manufacturers want longer shelf-life. Here's my answer, hope it helps.

Manufacturers decide the sell-by/best-by/expiration date.

Manufacturers want products to be good longer because it increases profit and makes the product easier to sell. There are a couple of reasons behind this.

1) Unsold product generates zero profit. This seems pretty straightforward. Product can be unsold for a variety of reasons, theft, damage, lost, etc, but for food the biggest cause of unsold product is product that is past its expiration date. Longer shelf-life reduces that chances of a product being discarded unsold, so it's more desirable for whoever has to sell the product. Okay, so why do manufacturers care? They aren't selling the product to consumers right?

2) Manufacturers are often retailers. An oddity of the food industry is that companies pay for stores to have their products. For there to be Fritos in Wal-Mart, Frito-Lay has to buy/rent shelf-space for their product. They then claim a percentage of the sale-price. Essentially, they are selling on commission. Product didn't sell, Frito-Lay is the one who has to soak up the loss. But what about when manufacturers aren't retailers?

3) Retailers don't buy products with short shelf-life. Alright, let's say we're not dealing with a corporate giant like Wal-Mart that can demand companies sell on commission. Frito-Lay is selling Fritos to a wholesaler that supplies independent gas stations. Frito-Lay gets their money once the deal is made, why do they care if it's thrown away or not? Because the retailer stills has to deal with reason #1. Unsold product generates no profit. If you know of two similar products, one with longer shelf-life and one with shorter, you will buy the one that lasts longer for your store as it maximizes the chances you will recoup your investment. Shorter shelf-life means having a harder time convincing other businesses to buy your product. It makes the investment riskier. Going along with this, businesses will often outsource creation of new products to specialist companies/labs. When doing so, a minimum shelf-life is a standard requirement for the reasons above. If your product doesn't meet their requirements, they won't accept it. The result of this, and the influence of marketing and admins who are clueless as to how reality works, is I've dealt with companies who have demanded organic, preservative free potato salad with a six-week shelf-life. I'm sorry, but you fail at science.

4) Consumers don't like short-shelf life. Whether it's because they think the product is fresher, 'Oh, the expiration date is two-weeks further away than the one right next to it. It must be fresher!' or because they don't want food to go bad. 'This milk expires Friday and I'm not sure I'll use it up in time, better go with one that's good until next Thursday.' Consumers preferentially buy products with longer expiration dates.

So, whether it's manufacturers, retailers, or consumers, nobody wants a short-shelf life.

I hope that helps.

[u/wear_my_socks]

Mirror?

[u/[deleted]]

Seems like John Oliver's spirit animal is Raccoon.