These days, 2 cents is barely even acknowledged, much less considered to have any value at all - 2 cents! Preposterous! These days it'd be more like '50 cents worth'... or even '$1 worth' could be seen as having a nominal value at best. Who values the "all mighty dollar" still?
How about when you heard folks say someone wasn't "making ends meet?" I admit, when I was young, I thought it was "meat" since it seemed to imply someone was poor, so they couldn't even get meat on the table.
Sometimes that was us, so I often struggled with thinking are we, or aren't we "poor?"
There seemed to be people who were doing "better," and also some doing "worse" so it seemed we were in the middle, even if we didn't 'make ends meat.'
But I learned later on that it meant the ends of a loaf of bread. Folks who could "afford" to leave the ends in the bag, perhaps, were fortunate, and wealthy. They didn't have to eat the ends, so they would meet in the bag. Those who couldn't "afford" to waste food wouldn't 'make ends meet' because they'd eat the ends, too.
Now this gave me pause, too, because the ends always seemed a great slice to eat to me - for toast, peanut butter, tuna or egg salad - the ends were sturdy and held up like a roll in my opinion. I guess I've been a bread connoisseur for years. But for some reason this was symbolic of wealth. And I remember thinking, when I was on my own, I'd let the ends meet so I could find wealth... be wealthy. (I confess, I soon let that go - because I like the ends!)
Well, now it seems waste of all kinds is a common situation for folks. Does it symbolize wealth anymore? Or gluttony? Ignorance? Wealth, or at least the perception of it, seems to be demonstrated through waste...of food, money through gas guzzling SUVs or even time as we stare at phones, sacrificing human interactions. It's been going on for so long, sometimes I think folks don't even realize... or we do realize, but we want to seem "wealthy" so wasting something must show we are.
While all of these are unfortunate, the loaf of bread brings me closest to waste of food each day and year in America, while simultaneously people are starving right here too.
"According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 15.8 million children under 18 in the United States live in households where they are unable to consistently access enough nutritious food necessary for a healthy life.[1] Although food insecurity is harmful to any individual, it can be particularly devastating among children due to their increased vulnerability and the potential for long-term consequences."
The amount of waste Americans produce each day is exorbitant. The overall poverty rate was 14.5%, with 14.7 million or approximately 20% of children in the US living in poverty in 2013 [2,3].
While this was lower than noted in prior years, it's still abominable.
An estimated 50 million Americans do not have access to enough food [4] and yet
food is the largest single source of waste in the U.S.
More food ends up in landfills than plastic and than paper.
"According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 20% of what goes into municipal landfills is food. Food waste tipped the scale at 35 million tons in 2012!
The enormous amount of wasted food is weighing on our food system. An incredible 40% of the available food supply in the U.S. is never eaten, according to research funded by the National Institutes of Health. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are going hungry and landfills are filling up." [5]
I hope this has all been worth sharing at the rate of 2 cents! :)
The enormous amount of wasted food is weighing on our food system. An incredible 40% of the available food supply in the U.S. is never eaten, according to research funded by the National Institutes of Health. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are going hungry and landfills are filling up." [5]
I hope this has all been worth sharing at the rate of 2 cents! :)
References:
1. http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hunger/child-hunger/child-hunger-fact-sheet.html
2. http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/14/PovertyAndIncomeEst/ib_poverty2014.pdf
3. DeNavas-Walt, C. & B.D. Proctor. (2014). Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013. U.S. Census Bureau.
4. http://www.epa.gov/foodrecovery/
5. http://harvestpublicmedia.org/article/food-waste-weighing-down-us-food-system
No comments:
Post a Comment