Americans waste an astonishing amount of food. An estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption goes to waste, about a pound of food every day for every American.

Grocery stores discard products because of spoilage or minor cosmetic blemishes, while restaurants throw away what they don’t use. Meanwhile, consumers throw away everything from bananas that have turned brown to last week’s Chinese leftovers.

In 1995, one of the few studies of food waste showed that 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. Fresh produce, milk, grain products and sweeteners made up two-thirds of the waste.

In light of the emerging food crisis abroad, and considering that people are dying every day from not enough food, this is an area that needs more careful attention.