Laboratory of Biological Modeling, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2009 Nov 25;4(11):e7940. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007940.
Food waste contributes to excess consumption of freshwater and fossil fuels which, along with methane and CO(2) emissions from decomposing food, impacts global climate change. Here, we calculate the energy content of nationwide food waste from the difference between the US food supply and the food consumed by the population. The latter was estimated using a validated mathematical model of metabolism relating body weight to the amount of food eaten. We found that US per capita food waste has progressively increased by approximately 50% since 1974 reaching more than 1400 kcal per person per day or 150 trillion kcal per year. Food waste now accounts for more than one quarter of the total freshwater consumption and approximately 300 million barrels of oil per year.
食物浪费导致过度消耗淡水资源和化石燃料，而食物分解产生的甲烷和二氧化碳排放也会影响全球气候变化。在这里，我们通过计算美国食物供应与人口所消耗食物之间的差值来计算全国性的食物浪费所蕴含的能量。后者是使用经过验证的新陈代谢数学模型来估算的，该模型将体重与所吃食物的量联系起来。我们发现，自 1974 年以来，美国人均食物浪费量逐渐增加了约 50%，达到每人每天超过 1400 卡路里，或每年 150 万亿卡路里。目前，食物浪费量占总淡水资源消耗的比例超过四分之一，约占每年 3 亿桶石油。
