Watch John Oliver explain just how much food Americans waste in a year (spoiler: It's a lot)

On Sunday's Last Week Tonight, John Oliver tackled food waste, a topic that he admitted blew his mind once he started looking at the statistics. The numbers he shared were astonishing: As much as 40 percent of all food produced in the U.S. never gets eaten; Americans throw away $165 billion worth of food every year; and the amount of food being thrown out has increased by around 50 percent since the 1970s. "At this rate," he said, "in 40 years when you order pizza from Domino's, they'll just deliver it straight to the nearest dumpster — as they should, but that's not the point here."

Perhaps the biggest shock — to both viewers and Oliver himself — is the fact that those "use by" dates on cartons of milk and yogurt aren't a strict standard. It has nothing to do with safety; it's just a manufacturer's best guess of when the food will be the freshest. "The truth is, with the exception of baby formula, the federal government does not require any food to carry an expiration date," Oliver said. "Most of the time, sell by dates are one of those things that look official but you can usually ignore, like a child in a cop uniform." Watch the fascinating segment below, and be sure to stick with it all the way through to the end, when Oliver explains what the Senate did to a bill that could have actually done something about food waste. Catherine Garcia

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