Celebrate the Bounty, Not the Waste
Americans toss a lot of food in the garbage, equaling about $165 billion every year. About $293 million of our food waste dollars are spent during Thanksgiving, and that’s just from tossing turkey. For our Thanksgiving meal, we’ll purchase nearly 3 million pounds of collard greens, 2 million pounds of kale and 1.2 million pounds of Brussels sprouts. In fact, food purchases during the week of Thanksgiving are second only to the week of Christmas for all food and beverage categories combined in the U.S. So, in being thankful for our food bounties, should we really strive to eat so much of it during the holidays? Especially since I doubt a celebration resulting in so much food (and other) waste would be something our Puritan ancestors would take pride in.