The amount of food the people in the world waste is comical. As an advanced society, we don’t really act sophisticated at all. Never in the history of the world, had there been a case where humanity was suffering as a whole because of a failed justice system. Equality, and justice are often mixed up. You can have equality, but fail to do what’s right for everyone. They aren’t the same thing. People all over the world are starving, even here in the U.S, and instead of giving those in need the food we don’t use, what do we do with it? Simple. We throw it away.

Stores all over the country are filling trucks with food daily, their only destination the dump. The food they throw away is enough to fill the Rose Bowl stadium every day. Most of that food is not rotten, or beyond edible, it’s good fresh food! As a nation, we have double the amount of food needed to feed every person living in the U.S, and then some, but 40% of it goes uneaten. That’s around $165 billion dollars per year. That’s as a nation. In our own households, we throw 14 to 25% percent of the food and drinks we buy, which costs from $1,365 to $2,275 dollars. That new phone you were eyeing? Well you could have bought it. More than 1 in 5 children in the US are at risk of hunger. Among African and Latinos, it’s 1 in 3. Isn’t that a little sad? To top it all off, each year, 3.7 million households are unable to provide adequate, nutritious food for their children. We have so many ways to stop hunger. Right?… No.

For every 100 school lunch programs, there are only 87 breakfast sites and just 36 summer food programs. That’s barely enough, and to add to that, those Anti-hunger organizations in the United States are growing to be massive, multi-million dollar agencies that often are completely isolated from the communities they serve. We need to stop depending on organizations to do the work for us, we need to take charge, and place ourselves in other people’s shoes! We might not be able to change everything, but at least we changed something. Jimmy Dean once said, “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” Maybe we aren’t the most important of people, or the most influential, but do we honestly have to be? We have so much power in our tiny little fingers, than we want ourselves to realize, but that’s also what scares us. So instead of attacking the whole, why can’t we just start out in our own homes first? It’s not really that hard to, but we make it seem so. We can’t keep avoiding our problems to an extent where we’re blinded by a illusion, hidden from reality. It’s too easy to slip up, and to fall, but it’s just as easy to get back up again. Wasting food will get no one anywhere. I hope people start realizing that.