Did you know that with the exception of baby formula, the FDA does not regulate nor mandate food manufacturers and produce suppliers to include an expiration date on anything we purchase? I didn't know that.
In fact, I think that most of us take the expiration date printed on the foods we buy as gospel and won't eat or drink these foods if that date is reached. In fact, the expiration date is only a guess by the manufacturer and, if I were a bit jaded, I might just believe that it would be in the suppliers best interest to have a very short-term shelf life listed in order to get us to throw out food past its date and purchase more.
This may be a contributing factor in the following statistic: we throw away enough food each year to FILL 273 sports stadiums! This in a country with over 50 million people who haven't enough food to eat, including having one out of five children going to bed hungry every night.
We are a visual species. For example, if that peach isn't perfect looking, we won't buy it. The FDA rates fruit on how it looks, not on content or taste. Since the farmers know they can't sell imperfect looking fruit, all the unacceptable fruit sits under the trees, rotting. Even worse, all that food we throw away ends up in landfills....producing copious amounts of methane gas, which causes much more of a greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide levels.
It might be time to rethink how we buy food...maybe not so much at a time so we don't waste so much of it...20 pounds of good food per person per year thrown out and, considering how many Americans don't have enough to eat, that figure is very, very low.
Please, just take a moment to consider this information before throwing any more food away.
Dr. Esther
drkollars@gmail.com
fixdhealthcare.com
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