American Wasteland by Jonathan Bloom Book Review

"Every day, America wastes enough food to fill the Rose Bowl."

This is the first sentence from the first page of American Wasteland, Jonathan Bloom's new book about how our country "throws away nearly half of its food," and it has been ringing in my head for weeks, whenever I'm at the store, poking through the fridge, or cooking dinner. A giant football stadium filled with squandered food (every. single. day!) is a startling image but, more importantly, why does it matter and and what can we do about it?

To start, we can learn about how and why all this food goes uneaten – it isn't pretty, but it's quite fascinating. Bloom, a journalist and founder of the website WastedFood.com, does a fantastic job of taking readers through the U.S. food system, traveling from farm to fork and everywhere in-between. He investigates every aspect of the food chain, including farms, trucking operations, supermarkets, restaurants, homes, and food recovery groups, to discover the institutional, cultural, and psychological reasons for food waste.

Most of this wasted food is perfectly edible. But according to Bloom, we have come to take food for granted as a result of factors like our industrialized food system, a disconnect from farms and cooking, and the perception that food is cheap and abundant. Food that doesn't fit consumers' expectations gets tossed. The modern lack of kitchen skills also comes into play, as many of us don't know what to do with a container of leftovers or how to preserve extra fruits and vegetables. Frugality is no longer a virtue.

Why does any of this matter? For one, many Americans are hungry, and Bloom discusses some ways in which food can be recovered and redistributed to these citizens. Aside from moral and ethical reasons, he also describes the grave environmental consequences of wasting food. Contrary to popular perception, throwing away organic matter is not necessarily benign. Trapped in landfills, it can emit harmful methane and pollute the groundwater. And then there are all the resources that went into growing, processing, and transporting that food in the first place…

This is a sobering topic, but it's an important one, and I urge anyone who's interested in changing our food system, or just changing everyday personal habits, to read Bloom's book. His prose is enjoyable to read and you don't feel like you are being preached to or dragged through doom-and-gloom. While he acknowledges that we'll never completely end food waste, Bloom does offer some real solutions for the national and individual levels. Reading this book, I was shocked, then saddened, and now energized, and I am grateful to Bloom for sharing this topic in such a thorough and engaging way.

• Read it: American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It), $17.16 at Amazon

Apartment Therapy Media makes every effort to test and review products fairly and transparently. The views expressed in this review are the personal views of the reviewer and this particular product review was not sponsored or paid for in any way by the manufacturer or an agent working on their behalf. However, the manufacturer did give us the product for testing and review purposes.

(Image: Da Capo Press)

Comments (10)

Sounds like a very interesting and eye-opening book. I have recently taken the small step of freezing leftovers (even just 1 slice of pizza or a few slices of bread) to eat later as a meal or a snack, instead of letting those leftovers sit in the fridge until they spoil. I'm still working on not letting fresh produce spoil before I use it, but I suppose that's a matter of buying less, eating more, or giving it away.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention! I work for our local food bank which includes a prepared/perishable food rescue program and a harvest gleaning program. This should be a good read!

I just bought a couple chickens from my local farmers market and they were quite pricey since they were pastured chickens. So I'm using every single piece when I make them. So Sunday I roasted the whole chicken. Used the neck/heart/liver for making gravy. Tonight I'm making chicken salad with the leftover meat. This weekend will be chicken soup with the leftover carcass/bones/etc.

The Husband and I had problems for a while with letting food spoil in the fridge or on the counter.

I've found a couple key habits that help:

1. Keeping the fridge organized. If you keep all the produce on the same shelf, you'll know where it is, what you have and what you need to use. You won't find moldy fruit or wilty vegetables smushed in a back corner somewhere.

2. Keeping recipes in a searchable format. I have a Google e-mail account to which I e-mail all of our favorite recipes. If I have an herb or vegetable I need to use up, I type that particular item into the search and all the recipes that contain it come up.

3. Menu planning. Oh... menu planning is so crucial. I've found that we can make a variety of meals and use food before it spoils if we carefully plan around the ingredients.

Should be a good read. I like how the comments speak to different ways in which food is wasted or saved. A couple of comments about how to deal with leftovers and home food storage--this was also addressed in a recent NYT article. A comment about food banks and gleaning. And a comment about how high quality/price ingredients make us appreciate food on another level, leading us to use every bit of it. I'd add another element to the discussion and that is how people like me, who are in the restaurant industry can address the problem of waste. I could write my own book on that.

I have a feeling that restaurants and grocery stores are the worst culprits.

I find it helpful to prep everything from the farmer's markets the day we buy it and then meal plan.

Pet peeve: importantly is incorrect. "Most important...is correct."

yep, restaurants and grocery stores are the biggest problems imo. then you have to add their supply chain into the mix. what do grocery stores sell? cheap food. what do restaurants sell? cheap food. grocery stores sell you cheap canteloupes that cooking shows tell you to cut in half and use as serving bowls--you will then throw those out. restaurants give you huge portions so that when they bag up your leftovers into a shopping bag you feel like you got a great value--you actually get to take something home with you. In reality, like the canteloupe, you will throw the leftovers away and the packaging will fill up your trash bag--which you also throw away. Like the farmers market scenario--you would not turn an heirloom melon into an inedible serving bowl. A restaurant that uses expensive farmer's market-type product typically serves smaller or shared portions which are typically completely eaten on the spot. But that doesn't mean there isn't waste on the "fine dining" level--fine dining restaurants often only use the "best parts" of things as well as endangered species. I'm thinking that American Wasteland must be around 1200 pages? Or more?

Unfortunately I very frequently waste food at restaurants, not to mention whatever is happening in the kitchen. Portions are usually too big. I rarely box up the leftovers because I'm usually not going straight home and they'll spoil before I can get them into my fridge.

I think part of the problem is that we think things spoil sooner than they do. Often, the use-by dates are conservative and can usually be used a few days after the printed date. We should be less squeamish about such things and trust our sense of smell, taste and so on.

Older generations were much better with eating leftovers, and like a previous commenter said, knowing how to use every bit of meat/vegetables etc.