Americans throw out $160 billion worth of fruits and vegetables every year

Too many fruits and vegetables go to waste in America.

(Image credit: Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)

published 13 July 2016

America's quest for perfection is sending $160 billion worth of produce down the garbage chute every single year. A report by The Guardian Wednesday revealed that, thanks to both retailers' and consumers' demand for fruits and veggies sans blemishes, more than 60 million tons of food — food that farmers say is both "high-value and nutritious" — never makes it into Americans' mouths. Instead, it is left to rot in fields or warehouses, fed to livestock, or simply shipped off to landfills.

All that waste places a "heavy toll" on the environment and on Americans' wallets, The Guardian reports. The average family of four, for instance, wastes about $1,600 worth of food a year. "If you and I reduced fresh produce waste by 50 percent like [the U.S. agriculture secretary] Vilsack wants us to do, then supermarkets would go from [a] 1.5 percent profit margin to 0.7 percent," Roger Gordon, founder of a startup to "rescue and re-route rejected produce," told The Guardian. "And if we were to lose 50 percent of consumer waste, then we would lose about $250 billion in economic activity that would go away."