On "Junk" Food
When someone mentions the word junk food, more than likely the average person would more than likely refer to the copious amounts of pre packaged, unhealthy, and relatively unfufilling foods asociated with snacks and fast food. In general this will be the case, but I want to refer to is this
Something that may not entirely be on the radar of everybody's mindframe is the amount of food we throw away as a society. It is estimated that in the United States alone over 70 billion pounds of food get sent to the dump, this does not include the amount of waste associated with producing the food( think whey juice and peelings) nor the uneaten food that someone would throw away after a meal. In a twisted and darker outlook on this subject, we can probably sleep easier at night knowing that those years of your parents berated you to finish your meal because you shouldn't waste food only amounted to about a pebble in a sea of waste. Well the truth is that yes, a lot of food does go to waste each and every day, and instead of making use of this food; repurposing the waste, donating the excess, or simply cutting back on production and overstocking, we simply toss it to the dumps.
As bad as this situation sounds, and honestly it sounds bad, there are people hoping to make a difference and try and come up with solutions to reducing the amount of food waste that we produce:
Out of sight, out of mind seems to be a common belief that many people choose to follow. I mean if do not become exposed to certain situations, you don't have to put the effort in arming yourselves with knowledge when it comes to that subject. Enter John Oliver, host of the HBO news program: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. With a program based around a more comedic stance on serious and rather underepresented problems within the American society, Johhn Oliver works to exposed more and more people to these issues. While the show itself comes out on HBO, the main segments are all available on Youtube.
Dive! is a film about dumpster diving. Now some people may have some reservations about the subject, after all I am assuming that the first image that comes to a person's mind when dumpster diving is mentioned is probably a homeless person looking for scrapes to eat. This film is far from that. The film is focused around a man and his group of friends and family, along with a few other scraglers appearing here and there. This film exposed the severity of grocery stores and their excess product. It makes sense that as fully stocked as a grocery store usually is, more than likely much of the product they have will need to be thrown out, either because of some sort of damage to the product, or it is past or close to expiration date, or they simply need to make room for more product. What the film demonstrates however is that most of this food that gets thrown away, and is perfectly safe to eat. There are three rules for dumpster diving: diving is first come first serve and you must wait your turn, you only take what you need and leave the rest for another fellow diver, and lastly you must always leave the place cleaner than before you jumped in. What followed was almost sickeningly glorious as the participants in the documentary ate like kings, while they also noted that services like food banks and various shelter and rehab clinics could find the food a proper home, but much of it fails to do so.
Long story short, we simply waste too much as a society. There are people within our own societies that could use this food, but not enough is done to connect them to it. Its a simple change we could do that only really needs a little effort, but a little can go a long way.
