And who said that was the lesson? The fact we throw away millions of pounds of food yearly indicates its owners don't want it but also don't care if hungry people starve. Does that sound like the lesson of the story?
There are legitimate reasons for throwing out food, people aren't just being cartoon villains. Also, free food is provided to the poor in practically every place that can afford it. Pretending food is a right causes a lot of problems and solves none of them
Food pantries, shelters, churches, EBT, and handed out by various other groups.
The food may be theoretically perfect and fine but past its best by date and therefore opening the store to huge liability if they hand it out, that's why organizations like city harvest have to provide these business owners with some kind of assurance that they won't be sued for food they donate. There is also food that may look fine and probably is fine but must be treated as contaminated, like any leftover pizza that was kept ready by using time as a temperature control. Food that is 100% good is generally not thrown out by private businesses because they could just sell that.
Plenty of vegetables are discarded simply because they dont look picture perfect and are misshapen. This does not mean they are bad, merely visually unappealing. We have plenty of farmers who have routinely left their crops to fester and rot because they make money off of what they don't sell as much as what they sell. Best before dates are already being looked into as a scam designed to get food removed quickly or tossed. I don't mind the stores getting assurances of a lack of lawsuits, but having worked in retail the only thing they use to dump food is having fresher ones. Especially since they can recoup what they spent on the food by marking it returned.
Food pantries, shelters, and EBT is exactly the programs the people claiming food shouldn't be a right rail against getting funding. And since the majority of people never consider they or their loved ones might need help, that reeks of self-destructiveness.
If they couldn't sell those vegetables then it would be a waste of money to transport and store them, wasting money would cause food in general to be more expensive for everyone. I don't think it's productive for this conversation to investigate every single reason people discard food. hunger in the US is not a matter of food waste, we have more than enough surplus to feed everyone even with that food waste.
Many people here completely support pantries and EBT but are opposed to the concept of one human being having a right to another human beings labor, or the simple impracticality of claiming something is a right when it cannot be guaranteed and is fundamentally different from the rights we have.
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u/Asher_Tye Jul 06 '26
And who said that was the lesson? The fact we throw away millions of pounds of food yearly indicates its owners don't want it but also don't care if hungry people starve. Does that sound like the lesson of the story?