A conversation about ethanol recently took a surprisingly emotional turn. My friend, from a large Asian country never far from food emergencies, told me how wrong it feels to him when Americans waste food, or play with it, or in the case at hand, drive it.
This was refreshing even as it was urgent. Because food is life. It should be felt, not just consumed. In fact, there's something deeply human about strong feelings about wasted food.
Meanwhile, the New Republic's Vine - their environmental blog - takes a look at wasted food. As it turns out, roughly 50% of the food we humans produce gets wasted. In poor countries it's market inefficiencies (food rotting in the fields etc.); in rich countries it's too much market efficiency (Food is so cheap that we buy more than we can use and throw it away.
