How Much Do We Waste?

Parade magazine had a small article last Sunday about grocery store waste.  It estimated that $20 billion was thrown away every year.  This is disgusting, and undoubtedly true.  I was in charge of buying punch for an event, and what we did not used, and was clearly still sealed, I returned to Meijer.  They cheerfully refunded my money, and then slapped on big orange stickers that said not to restock or resell.  When I asked the clerk why they could not be donated, she said that it was too big of a risk because it might have been contaminated. 

The article went on to say that total American food waste was $48 billion.  So, I pulled out my calculator.  The 2007 census estimated there were  111,162,259 households in the US.  Divide that by the $28 billion left after the grocery store waste, and that means that all of us are pitching out $431 worth of food every year. 

Can this be?  In an earlier post I talked about using up stuff in our freezer (which made the husband uber happy).  We do our best to have a leftover day every week, but some stuff inevitably gets pitched (does it count as waste if the dog eats it?)  Over the weekend my friend and I helped our other friend move, and we probably pitched $100 worth of freezer burned food out of her freezer and half used bottles of lost stuff from the back of her 'fridge.   Hmmm.  Maybe I should plan a week around the contents of my 'fridge....