Essay by Eric Worrall
“… It is nearly impossible for the globe to meet … the Paris Accords without reducing waste from the food system …”
Food waste is a major contributor to climate change. What are the solutions?
by Christine Clark, University of California – San Diego
APRIL 17, 2025…
“It is nearly impossible for the globe to meet emissions targets set forth by the Paris Accords without reducing waste from the food system,” said Robert Sanders, an assistant professor of marketing and analytics at the Rady School of Management who is one of the world’s top experts on this issue. …
For example, policymakers and scholars have a hypothesis that 7–10% of all food waste stems from confusion about the meaning of expiration-date-label formats (e.g., “best by” vs. “use by”). California even passed a law (AB 660) on the basis of these claims about these date labels, hoping to motivate people to not dispose of food that’s safe to eat, but there’s still no scientific evidence of how these date-label formats actually affect purchases and waste in the field—that is, when real choices are made.
…
The other solution I investigate is dynamic pricing. More than 10% of food waste comes from grocery retailers that throw out surplus perishables past their expiration date.
Read more: https://phys.org/news/2025-04-food-major-contributor-climate-solutions.html
Dynamic pricing spurs retailers to throw out less food by applying an algorithm that determines when grocery stores should reduce the price of perishables depending on their inventory and expiration date. This way, vendors can change the price of food multiple times a day, compared to static pricing in which products have the same price all day. It also makes perishables, which are less processed and generally healthier, more affordable.
…
My biggest problem with this article, is like all green initiatives, it is an attack on freedom. if I want to let cucumbers go rotten in my refrigerator, that is my god given right to do so. I like cucumber salad – but not all the time. If I purchase cucumbers just in case I want cucumber salad, that is freedom to choose – I can choose to use the cucumbers, or I can choose to eat something else.
Imagine a world where you have to eat stale but technically edible food, to avoid a financial penalty – or where buying those cucumbers is a commitment to eat them. This would amount to state enforced poverty on the middle class – people would no longer be free to change their minds about what they wanted to eat.
I doubt the elites have any intention of eating the out of date food they would force on the peasants in the name of climate action. They can always eat at expensive restaurants like The French Laundry if they want to sample the good life, regardless of what is in their refrigerator at home.
As for grocery stores discounting out of date produce, perhaps the professor should have looked a little closer. In my part of the world at least, premium grocery stores rarely throw out perishables, they begin a second life in discount stores, only succumbing to time when they perish so much not even poor people want them. I’m pretty sure California is no different, I remember seeing a discount section in the West Hollywood grocery store I visited many years ago.
Please send an address where I can send any out of date fruit and meat so these people can eat it.
No refrigeration needed, of course.
I’ll donate some toe jam.
Eat your food. There are people in China who are starving.
Ok, Mom. Pack it up and send it to them.
Decades old joke.
Our version was Biafra!
I asked once, and was told it is illegal in California for grocery stores to donate out of date food to soup kitchens etc. It has to be thrown away. This was specifically about good edible food which has reached some legally mandated date.
No date. 10-20 years ago. I don’t remember sell by, use by, best by, or any other details. I only remember the food he was taking out of the produce section was perfectly edible and I probably would have bought some if I’d been there five minutes sooner.
My son was working for Family Dollar/Dollar Tree and they were required to throw out anything with a date on it past which, even is it was not even food. ANY item with a visible date, clothing, disposable diapers, plasticware, anything with a date. And had to be ruined, packages opened, smashed and then into the dumpster. That is corporate policy because of lawyers.
because of liars…
I read an article quite a few years back, about employees pouring bleach over the food when it was being thrown out.
According to the article this was being done on the advice of lawyers. They were afraid that if someone got sick eating the thrown out food, the store could be sued. The recommended solution was to make sure the food was inedible.
Demented people living on the street might eat in anyway- then die- bad karma for those liars… er… lawyers.
Lawyers….too bad ya can’t kill’em and eat’em. But then you’d probably get food poisoning.
I think a lot of out of data bread etc goes to cattle or to chicken farms.
Yuh, they’re not fussy. 🙂
I admit it: I toss at least 25 percent of what I buy.
Bread. I love fresh bread but “freshness” goes fast and you can only make so many croutons. Packaged sandwich bread and the like look great two weeks out. “Looks” are one thing…
Meat. Smell test tells me what I want to know.
Veggies. These can be tricky but if they’re going soft, get some new ones.
Condiments. So confusing. Some people think they last forever. I think not.
Some questions:
Why do supermarkets price avocados at $2 when they KNOW half will be in the dumpster a week later? Maybe make them a “loss-leader”. Lose less money and get more people in the store? According to my neighbor (30+ years in the biz), the store doesn’t decide – it’s corporate/
What’s the diff. re. Best By, Use By and Sell By (might as well change the latter to “Good Luck”. I think somebody could make some money if they defined those markers and branded them for display on packaging. In this same vein; would it not be useful to include TWO dates – the usual one AND an “after opened” one? And, how much stuff is gonna kill you if you don’t “refrigerate after opening”?
Finally, just downsize refrigerators by half or more. If you can’t see it, you’re not going to eat it. Breaks my heart to toss leftovers that would have been great ten days ago!
No date. 10-20 years ago.
I recall the same from late 90’s.
Yes, eating old food will change the weather. I’m convinced!
It would definitely change my wind.
As far as I can tell where I am, any institutional facility that is under the influence of a government will not allow anything at or past a best before date. One cannot donate a bag of flour to an assisted living house that is a week past the BB date. You cannot send a child to a daycare with a juice box a day past the BB date without getting a nasty warning. A local food bank will not accept anything past the date. But the irony of accepting a can that only has a lot number instead seems to be ignored.
I’ve seen people refuse to buy an item in a grocery store because it only had three months till the best before date came up.
And I’ve seen someone turn a bag of salt over and over looking for a best before date. The contents had only sat underground for millions of years, surely it would have a date on it.
When government officials deliberately conflate best before and expiry dates, why would it be surprising when the majority of the public not understand the difference?
Lawyers, and judges who let juries be swayed by lawyers.
One million dollar verdict, and every other lawyer will join the fray. Roundup had, what, 1000 wins, then some sleazebag got a conviction?
I did some side work stocking bread at a couple local supermarkets. The distributor I worked for told me the “outdated” bead items that were removed from the shelves were checked for mold, then donated if they were good.
I noticed in Beijing grocery stores that many food products were well past their expiration dates. Does this give them carbon credits for all their coal mines?
This is a nonissue.
“It is nearly impossible for the globe to meet … the Paris Accords without reducing waste from the food system …”
We are not going to meet the Paris Accords no matter what we do, the Paris Accords are nonsense. Therefore we can throw our food away when we want and Professor Sanders can go to hell.
No meat. No dairy. No farms. Now no food.
Sense a pattern here?
According to this article, my mom is a climate warrior! haha
According to this article, so am I!
I generally only buy what I need, and if something is outdated, it goes into a stew or a soup. When I buy fresh meat or fish, it goes straight into the freezer until I’m ready.
Waste not, want not.
That reminds me.. time to start using the stuff that has collected in the freezer. ! 🙂
Running out of room.
I find this ironic.
These very same people would have been shouting from the rooftops that covid was a killer bug and everyone should wear 3 masks simultaneously, stand 2m apart even when making love, let granny die of loneliness in her care home, keep your kids imprisoned at home suffocating in a face nappy and receiving little to no education for months on end, and get boosters for your boosters, despite no credible scientific evidence for any of the measures
And they wonder why people don’t eat food past the sell by or best buy date.
One reason is a culture of safetyism. We are constantly told not to do various things or to do various other things due to some minute chance of harm. Things like seat belts, bicycle helmets, and overbearing airport security checks
Yes, these things might save a handful of lives a year but in the overall scheme of things the effect is negligible.
Anyway, I find this quite funny on several levels. These “professors” are wasting taxpayer money on garbage “research”, which is actually nothing more than a few storming sessions on Teams to come up with silly mind maps of inane ideas
I hope people like this are being targeted when it comes to the federal research funding. Defund the lot of them and force them to do real jobs
After 9-11, an associate, an engineer, proclaimed he would gladly give up all of his freedoms to be safe. Words to that effect.
Life is not safe. The world is not safe. The universe is not safe. The best we can do is reduce the probabilities with pro-active choices.
I threw out a can of soup that was more than 1 year past its best use by. I ate a can of soup that was only 3 months late. I was informed that food in cans can last 5 years and still be good.
People die. All of us die. Instead of being paranoid and living in a cocoon to be safe, try getting out and enjoying what life has to offer.
I frequently find cheap potatoes and lettuces in supermarkets because of the “best before” date. They keep for weeks if kept whole and stored properly
When we were very poor in my grad school years, we went every Friday after 9 pm to the local supermarket and bought everything we could off the then proffered store front ‘rotten rack’. With a little industry, provided a week of Chinese/Japanese style nutrious fresh food meals. Just cut off any obviously rotten bits, and save the rest in fridge. ‘Best by’ was a then newish concept upon which we would have otherwise starved.
Yeah, me too. One gets pretty hungry on a TA salary…poor doesn’t cover it. I read alot of Euell Gibbons(?) “Stalking the Wild Asparagus”…violets are good salad stuff.
And whatever happened to small compost cans and even garden sized bins?
Ran both types for about 20 years before becoming physically unable. Stuff was unbeatable for dressing small area of the lawn and improving small garden beds’ soil texture.
Gums wonders…
Gone are the days of the root cellars where vegetables were kept for months after harvest.
Funny you should say that, my brother and I are contemplating building the very thing to store all his veggies grown in his garden, potatoes etc.
These Climate Warriors are not attracted to the Climate religion by a desire to help humanity. Rather, they are drawn to it by a desire to benefit their finances or to experience schadenfreude by punishing everyone else, inflicting inconvenience, poverty, deteriorated health or guilt upon them.
Sackcloth and ashes for us,.
‘Assistant professor of marketing’ and ‘one of world’s top experts’ only belong together in this MSM authors contrived fantasy land. Nuff said.
BTW, I have learned how to ‘preserve’ chicken noodle and beef vegetable soups for many months. When finished cooking, put still very hot into sealed plastic single portion containers. Let cool, then refrigerate indefinitely. Is a modern variation on old fashioned canning. Solves the perishables problem a modern ‘old fashioned’ way.
There seems to be a lot of confusion here regarding the following quote from Eric Worrall’s essay.
“Imagine a world where you have to eat stale but technically edible food, to avoid a financial penalty – or where buying those cucumbers is a commitment to eat them. This would amount to state enforced poverty on the middle class – people would no longer be free to change their minds about what they wanted to eat.”
Having read the linked article in the essay, I cannot find any suggestion or recommendation that any penalty should be applied to individual consumers to force them to eat the food they buy.
The only reference to a penalty is in relation to retailers sending their food-waste to landfills. Here’s the quote from the referenced article:
“My research in this space focuses on two potential solutions: food-waste landfill bans and dynamic pricing.
So let’s take these solutions one at a time. First, food-waste landfill bans are a way for the government to directly regulate food waste by imposing a penalty on retailers who try to send their food waste to landfills. The problem is food waste bans don’t work all that well for a couple of reasons.”
https://phys.org/news/2025-04-food-major-contributor-climate-solutions.html
So, the main solution proposed in the article is dynamic pricing, which makes sense. In Australia, the main supermarkets often discount items that are approaching their ‘best-before date’ or their ‘use-before date’, although they usually don’t make gradations in price as products gets closer to their use-by date. This is particularly noticeable regarding containers of milk in the supermarket fridge. If the customer is concerned about the use-by date, he can search the fridge to get a bottle, of the same brand, with the longest use-by date.
As stated in the article: “Why should you, the consumer, be paying the same price for milk that will expire one week from now as you would for milk expiring three weeks from now? Not only is it unfair, it’s inefficient.”
Food waste is a massive problem world-wide. From an AI search I get the following information:
“The estimated total value of food wasted globally each year is around US$1 trillion. This figure encompasses both food loss (food that is lost during production, processing, and transportation) and food waste (edible food discarded by consumers or retailers).”
Wow! US$1 trillion per year.
The quote is a projection of the logical next step.
Given all we see today, it is not an unrealistic projection.
What about convincing people to stop voting brain amputated retards into office, or eat their offspring…wouldn’t that be a refreshing change? (sarc)
I’ve never even noticed “sell by” dates on FFV (sorry, Navy term: Fresh Fruits and Vegetables). It’s pretty obvious whether that stuff is fresh or not when buying. If it’s not fresh, I don’t buy it.
Meats are a bit different and the “sell by” dates are a good gauge of which packages have been in the cooler longer. I always buy the ones with the most current sell by dates. Same with Milk and Eggs.
Frozen stuff I don’t care…as long as it stays frozen and isn’t freezer burned, it’s good to go. Canned foods as well. The “freshness” dates on canned goods mean nothing. Generally speaking, If the can is still sealed and isn’t damaged or all rusted up, the food is good. It it’s not good, your nose will tell you as soon as you open it.
I grew up on a farm. We grew or raised most of our own food. Mom canned way, way more food every year than we could possibly eat in a year. When she canned something, she’d write the year it was canned on the lid. Every couple of years, we’d go through the pantry and get rid of anything that the seal had broken and the contents had spoiled. Other than that, it was used. We were often eating foods that had been canned 4 or 5 years ago. The one caveat is that if the lid didn’t “pop” when she opened the jar, she’d dump it. That could mean that it had come unsealed and could have something nasty in it…as long as the jar still had vacuum when she opened it, we ate it.
We also had two big chest freezers for frozen veggies and meats. Once a year we’d butcher animals (beef, chicken, duck and lamb) and freeze them, they would last us the year easily and always had some carryover from year to year. Sidenote: we didn’t raise pigs because dad didn’t like how much they would tear up the barnyard so we’d buy a hog from another farmer down the road once a year.
Anyway, the point is that those “sell by” and “use by” dates don’t actually mean much except to tell you how fresh a particular package is relative to the others on the shelf.
“It it’s not good, your nose will tell you as soon as you open it.”
I dunno. My nose tells me brussel sprouts are never good.
Brussel sprouts. Little green balls of evil. 😎
That confirms the proposition 🙂
Your Mom sounds like my Mom was, and my wife is.
You will have nothing and you will be happy.
The insanities will continue until sufficient damage is accrued.
I wonder when the lawsuits from people who get sick eating expired food will be the tipping point for this nonsense.
I put out of date food and bits and pieces of veggies after chopping- into my compost bin for next year’s garden. Best possible fertilizer.
That’s depriving the chooks (chickens in the US) of a feed.
Where in the US do people use the word chooks? Not in the northeast, as far as I know. Then again, I don’t know much about farming.
They (Gallus gallus domesticus) are generically chooks here in Australia. Chickens are those newly hatched yellow fuzzy things.
I think in the US you call chooks chickens and chickens chicks 🙂
I am a “food manufacturer” (I make candies and spice blends), so I have had to learn about the laws around this. There are actually no federal regulations requiring “use by” or “best by” dates on ANY manufactured food product except for baby formula (i.e. everything but meat and produce – which I don’t know the rules about). They are put there voluntarily by the producer. As observed elsewhere, probably because of lawyers.
I know canned food lasts forever as long as the cans are intact. Eating WWII c-rations in the 80’s showed me that…
I had forgotten about the c-rations. Thanks.
“They are put there voluntarily by the producer.”
It could also be that the manufacturer doesn’t want their product to get a bad name if it taste stale?
I don’t have a very high opinion of the big food corporations, Gunga, (or big companies in general: “too big to care”), but in fairness your suggestion is also a very likely possibility.
The one case where I put a “best by” on my product is a mint where the flavor remains fine, but the filling gets really hard after about 8 weeks so it’s a somewhat unpleasant experience. I often let my cynicism get the better of me 🙂
This has already been done in the UK to much applaud, but not by me. What’s happened, and is exactly as I expected would happen, is that salad items especially now have no dates on them so the shops can now sell them for longer. I’m fed up with buying salad, especially cucumbers and tomatoes, only to find that they’ve gone rotten within a couple of days. Once it’s gone I have to throw it out myself and therefore I’m the one who has to take the hit. It’s doing nothing to stop the throwing away of food, it’s simply changing to me paying for it and then throwing it away instead of the store! The stores are the ones benefiting from this nonsense but no one else seems to realise that 🤷🏻♀️ The same goes for bananas recently, anyone else noticed you’re lucky if they’ve not gone black and soft within a couple of days 🤢 mind you the dogs are happy.
I also have a huge problem with the charging for plastic carrier bags. What people didn’t seem to understand when they first brought this in was that they were never “free” in the first place, the cost was always added onto the cost of the food, supermarkets just pretended they were free. When they were ordered to start charging for them did the cost of the food go down, of course it didn’t, plus I now had to pay for the bags. I also now have to buy plastic bin bags for the kitchen and bathroom waste, whereas I always used to use the “free” bags, so the amount of plastics being used hasn’t really changed, they pretend it has but they use fudged data just like they do for any of these so called green/eco decisions. Common sense has gone out the window it seems and it’s us that pays every single time!
California in the early 1970’s. Cans of beer had a date on the bottom. If it was still on the retailers shelf the wholesaler had to replace it and take the ‘outdated’ cans back. My wife was office staff for a wholesaler. He sold that returned stock to his employees at $2 a flat. My wife got 22 flats of beer into a 1970 VW Bug. Took me 18 months to drink it. Just one can didn’t ‘taste right’ on the first sip.
It was American beer. How could you even tell?
G’day ‘old cocky’,
Semi-educated taste buds. Brisbane: XXXX, Perth: Swan, Darwin: Swan, Houston: Lone Star, Port Moresby: South Pacific, Singapore: Tiger, Borneo: Bintang Baru. In the US since 1970: Schlitz and currently Budweiser.
At least it’s not Bud Light.
Grafton Toohey’s on tap before they closed that brewery. Hunter Old until it started giving me headaches (no, not from too much), more recently Cooper’s Pale Ale or Heineken. Hofbrau if it’s available.
I did pick up a taste for IPAs in northern California 10 years ago. Racer 5?
Northern California, we’ve passed through, never stopped anywhere long enough to sample the local brews. My wife’s parents lived in SoCal. Cooper’s had the reputation. Lone Star, one six pack and never again. That was in ’67, and Texas still had ‘dry’ counties. South Pacific, aka SP, was half the price of imported VB. It was known as “Swamp ah… ‘urine'”
Way off subject, but — Have you run across the name Hugh Lunn, he wrote “Over The Top With Jim” and others. He’s got a blog on SubStack, and currently doing a radio serial based on his book “The Great Fletch”. (Ken Fletcher, tennis player, who also spent his early years in Annerley)
Been away for a few days, so rather late replying.
I think Hugh also wrote “Spies Like Us”. Macca used to have him on “Australia All Over”, donkey’s years ago.
Out of date food has its purpose, compost it and help revitalise the looming tragedy of our impoverished soils. Calling it ‘dirt’ is a level of contempt not worth delving into, it is literally, earth.
Just forget food dates. In the 1920 and 1930s it was easy to check food – and we had no problems..